Lessons, Learned

A les­son is repeated until learned. It is pre­sented to you in var­i­ous forms until you learn it – then you can go on to the next lesson.

Well now. Here’s an inter­est­ing con­cept. Lessons are repeated, in var­i­ous forms, until they are learned.

This is one of the biggest chal­lenges in coun­selling. Get­ting peo­ple to a) rec­og­nize that what they are doing now, with this per­son / sit­u­a­tion is iden­ti­cal with what got them into their last mess. Then, b) doing some­thing different!

‘Tis but a scratch

A scratch?! Your arm’s off!
No, it isn’t.

It’s like a bad Monty Python sketch, it’s “You’re doing it again!” “Am not!”

My present favourite is:

“I totally screwed up my last rela­tion­ship, and have no clue how to relate, but boy am I going to keep doing what I think will work!”

Lessons, unfor­tu­nately, do not care that this time, you really mean for things to come out dif­fer­ently. Do the same thing, get the same results, every time.

It all starts when we’re kids.

Say you had an odd rela­tion­ship with your mother. Say that, for all your life, you’ve wanted your mother’s love. Your mother’s form of love was to give or with­hold love on the basis of what you do. You there­fore learn to look for approval from your mother by end­lessly chang­ing your behav­iour to more accu­rately reflect what you think your mother wants. (Notice, by the way, how con­fus­ing the lan­guage becomes when you own the actual process.)

In the end, though, even when you get approval for a behav­iour, you know, in your heart of hearts, it’s the behav­iour, not you, that she approves of. You believe, in your heart of hearts, that she doesn’t really love you. Or so you tell yourself.

As a kid, this was impos­si­ble to under­stand, let alone resolve. The com­plex­i­ties were too much for your young mind and heart to untangle.

Heavy of heart, you turn 18, go off to Uni­ver­sity or to work, think­ing you’ve left the prob­lem behind. And there, away from home, whom should you meet? Your mother in drag. Your mother in your girl­friend / boyfriend. Your mother in your boss. Your mother in your pro­fes­sor. And the dance begins again.

You find your­self try­ing to win the person’s atten­tion. How? By doing what you always did with good old mom. You end­lessly mod­ify your behav­iour, try­ing to please. You may meet with some suc­cess, but soon you may real­ize you are doing things for approval that you don’t want to do. (Sex in exchange for atten­tion is an obvi­ous one, as well as being the one to blame, pre­tend­ing to be the cause of the other person’s prob­lems, what­ever.) So, you leave the situation.

And you meet your mother again. Until you decide to get the lesson.

Get­ting our lessons is tricky until you remem­ber one thing. It’s your les­son, so it’s totally about you.

I was dri­ving in the coun­try recently, and I was think­ing about this arti­cle, and about using dri­ving as an illus­tra­tion. Say you’re dri­ving along. Some­one pulls out in front of you. You hit them, or swerve and end up in a ditch. Not a good experience.

Now, imag­ine if the les­son you took from that is that every­one else should learn not to pull out in front of you, because it’s wrong and because it’s not fair. So, what are you going to do? Take out ads? Buy radio spots?

Dar­bella and I met a woman on a nude beach in Jamaica. She loudly told a Jamaican ped­dler (of which there are a cou­ple) not to bother her, and then was annoyed when another ped­dler had the audac­ity to bother her. She said, “I told them to leave me alone. Why won’t they lis­ten?” Some­how, she thought telling one per­son would fil­ter up and down the beach. She was quite annoyed at their prob­lem “get­ting it.”

One won­ders who really has the problem.

So, dri­ving along, maybe the les­son is to pay atten­tion and watch approach­ing dri­vers. Maybe it’s to take a Skid School or Defen­sive Dri­ving course. It’s never going to be get­ting all the other peo­ple to stop pulling out. It’s going to be me, know­ing what to do when they do.

A les­son is learned when we see it com­ing, maybe even fall for it a bit, and then step back, say, “Nope. I don’t go there any more.” No “try­ing to change any­one else.” A les­son is learned when I learn it by chang­ing my own behaviour.

Look for the pat­terns in your life, the dra­mas that keep repeat­ing. Look for issues and per­son­al­ity types that keep show­ing up in unpleas­ant ways. There are your lessons. Now, try another approach. Let go of “what I’ve always done.” Embrace alter­na­tives. Ask your tribe, your cir­cle of friends, for suggestions.

Soon, the les­son will be learned.