Going back to go forward
The greatest teachers we have are our own failures. We learn a lot from experience, though it often comes at a personal cost. Your parents can tell you not to touch the stove because it is hot a thousand times over, but until you touch it for yourself, you have no real concept of what that means. Learning something and applying that knowledge is something, but to understand requires an empathic connection with that experience that is necessary for growth. A growth mindset is what enables people to develop skills and mature in a way that is unique to our species. To dwell in the past is to reject that growth, but a forward lifestyle that values progress over stagnancy tends to reward us with greater personal development. That being said, there are times when we have to take a few steps back to clear the hurdle in front of us. Whether we need to step back to see the bigger picture, relearn a lesson, or pull away to recover from a situation, backtracking isn’t a bad thing at all. We can’t keep charging through life recklessly, thinking the only important thing is to make it to the end. By retracing our footsteps, we often pick up on details and important pieces of insight that we may have missed.
Someone may have told you once that you (or someone you know) is like a bull in a china shop. As comical as it is to imagine a bull tiptoeing and stampeding through glass and porcelain, it’s humbling to realize how often we end up doing the same thing without even trying. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual, so we look to others and our experiences for guidance. We’re either afraid to bump into the things around us when we don’t know how to proceed, or we find ourselves charging blindly without regard for what we break or tread upon. At some point we realize that we have to make it to our destination and that a happy medium is the most efficient and graceful way out of the china shop. Will we blunder when we try new things? Absolutely. We will also benefit from the wisdom of others, drawing on experiences that we may not be ready for. Life is full of unexpected pitfalls and blessings, that’s part of what makes it so crucial to treat each day like it’s the dawn of something new. We like to walk through the past as a visitor, because to live there is to stop moving forward; but we must never forget to make those visits, because that is how we learn.
