By now, you know that I draw the
theme of these articles from my life experiences, which I subject to intense
scrutiny and which you, my long-suffering readers, are subjected to in
these articles. So I’ve been wondering
about -- how do we learn?
The other day my husband and I
attended an event that ran longer than anticipated, so by the end of the event
I was quite hungry. In the very crowded
car park, cars were feeding into one lane from about four different directions,
and pedestrians were crossing in front of and alongside cars to get to their
cars. My polite husband allowed several
cars to go ahead of us. Then he decided
to wait and see in which direction a large group was going, before merging into
the exit lane. As we saw they weren’t
going to cross in front of us, (from my low blood sugar perspective, or is this
just an excuse?), he seemed to be taking an inordinately long time to join the
exit queue. That’s when my patience ran out.
Here’s the thing -- my husband seems
to drive perpetually in the slow lane of life.
And while I’m not always rushing, I like to reach my destination while I
still have life in me. In all the years we’ve known each other, our temperaments
haven’t changed much. What has this to do
with learning, you ask?
This incident or variations of it
have occurred many times in our marriage.
So, how do we know whether we are learning or if we are just repeating
the same pattern mindlessly? Later, as we
discussed the incident, I acknowledged my responsibility for my reaction and
expressed regret for it. As I was apologizing,
I was also wondering why does this scene keep replaying.
If impatience is the culprit that
trips up my equanimity, then reflection on my outburst is my reset button. This is what I mean: by apologizing for being
rude and by analyzing how and why things unfolded as they did -- these actions
of acknowledging responsibility and of analyzing consequences -- automatically
give rise to awareness. And awareness is
the first step to learning.
The greatest understanding that
arose from this situation was that the people who irritate us (and we all play
this role to someone) also provide an opportunity for us to learn about
ourselves. My husband’s patience reveals
my own impatience. This showed me that
even though I’ve grown much, this is still a growth area for me.
Both parties have the potential to
learn from such incidents. I wondered
what he had learned from it? He replied
that circumstances demand we respond to them as they are unfolding rather than
rigidly sticking to just one way of approaching all situations in life.
So how we learn is by:
- becoming aware and acknowledging our role in an incident,
- examining our feelings and thoughts about it,
- analyzing the roles of the people involved,
- recognizing that each situation requires a fresh approach, and
- understanding that sometimes lessons are repeated.
Even though, these sorts of incidents
have occurred many times, the fact is that at each occurrence: the argument
duration is shorter, the anger less heated, the words less harsh, the feelings
less hurt, the calm less ruffled. And…we aren’t always the last car in the queue!!
