Sum Of Our Experience...

Preface: Had a talk with an old friend tonight that asked me about an issue she was having.  I suppose my answer to her is worth sharing here as well...

Sum Of Our Experience (With Eyes Wide Open):

We hear this alot and think and we know exactly what it means.  We look back on our successes and count them as though these alone make us who we are. The hard truth is that it is our response to failure that brings out the caliber of person we were created to become.  The flavor of success is best tasted only after you've been able to savor the bitterness of failure.  When we find the lesson in the loss and the purpose in the pain is when we are able to change direction towards the betterment of ourselves and fear is the only thing that can keep us stagnant.  The fear of experience and the fear of coming to the needed conclusion we might not want to accept.  My people, it is jarring to find that our wants and needs are not the same and that there will be certain times when we will need to forgo one for the other.  It can be disappointing when we find that life has changed us to the point where the clothes we were hoping to wear again one day will no longer fit us the same.  Then sometimes we are faced with the scariest prospect of all...that we no longer want what we used to.  That we need something more than what we've been accustomed to for fulfillment in one area or another.  Folks, what makes such a thing so frightening is the idea that we will have to experience a world unknown to us to find it.  Some may shrink from the challenge while others will face it to flourish.

In my time on earth I found there are many ways to teach a thing but no lesson given will ever change a life as much as experience can.  She has been my friend and teacher so I will only tell you what I know of her: Experience points the way to growth, experience makes the lines we should draw in the sand visible and it is experience that lets us see which roads will allow us to thrive and which roads will bring us to destruction.  Just make sure she is faced wide eyed, with courage and the willingness to accept her hard advice and you will find her friendship just as valuable as I do.  Breathe, live, watch, learn and grow...much love.  I'm out

~Moses Apollo Apolinaris