Lessons Learned from Living are the Most Valuable

A Christmas Card from Mother | Napoleon Hill Yesterday & Today Issue 359

Source: lumixgexperience-Cluke

Lessons learned from living are the most valuable ones. These experiential happenings often “cut us to the quick” as the Wizard of Oz tells Dorothy when she challenges his authenticity. Doing intensifies and cements the experience because it is in the “doing” that we live, move, and have our being. Through our bodies we internalize the experience and that is what makes it more profound.

Unless you have directly experienced something, you may think you understand what the actual feeling is like, but it is not until you do that you will know the difference between an imagined occurrence and an actual experience. The difference is intense. Many times people console others by saying “I know how you feel,” but those who actually have walked in your footsteps comfort with just silence and their physical presence. Words do not suffice.

In this lifetime, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. This experience is tied to the lessons that we are here to learn. All lessons are not popular or positive ones. Many are horrific and feel like a sucker punch right in the solar plexus. Once experienced, it is hard to forget something like that, so we learn a valuable lesson and keep on living but with eyes now wide open.

Death forces us into accountability with life. We already know the end result, but why is it we defer the good that we can now do until the opportunity has passed us by? Regret does not feel as good as joy in a job well done. When we are enthusiastic, passionate, and living the life we imagine, in the time of loss we will have stored up good memories that serve to console us. It is comforting to know that we contributed to the good of the whole, and did not fail to act when the opportunity was there for us.

Today, just for once do something extraordinary for someone who least expects it and maybe doesn’t “deserve” it. Feel the good that you can create and do it just to delight in the experience of playing the role of “do-gooder.” Each and every one of us can be a philanthropist if we just act on our highest imaginings. What legacy of experiences are you actualizing now?

Vintage Essay from
 Judy Williamson, Director

Napoleon Hill World Learning Center

Purdue University at Calumet