A long discussion about life can mean a lot of different things, or it can mean absolutely nothing. Most generally, it means I’m going to learn something.
People who leave your life, come into your life for a reason or a season. Some simply come into your life to show you that the cross you bear is light, compared to the ones in the other room. Today I experienced a cross bearing moment and realized how totally wonderful and awesome my children can be.
I’ve always believed that when the Master tunes the fiddle, it doesn’t matter who is playing the tune, it’s going to sound good. Today’s events proved once again that the Master is still in control and He knows how to tune the fiddle perfectly.
My son recently took up playing the fiddle and has learned a few choice notes along with the right way to stroke the horsehair on the strings. He rarely squeels, and his notes are fairly well drawn. I’m definitely not complaining about the way he plays.
As a lover of fine music, I must say the joy that comes as I listen to my children play various instruments runs deep into my soul. When the song happens to be one of my favorite (another child recently learned to play “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”) I’m just happier ‘n a fly on a hot summer day!
The lesson I learned today had little to do with playing music and everything to do with learning about life and growing up.
People who come into your life for a season limp along, teaching you little bits of something, often hanging onto your coat tails and lingering for what they can get from you. They often don’t offer you much in the way of gratitude and on those rare occasions that you do get something back from them, it’s tedious and costly effort that allows you to accept their gift. The season most generally ends on a sour note, costing you vivid anguish and great pain before they slip off into the sunset never to be heard from again. Or they meander in and out of your life, painfully reminding you that once up on a time they meant something to you, and you should still feel something for them… Even if the feeling was never mutual.
On the other hand, those who linger in your life for a reason, show you something in the earliest period of life that you need to learn and proceed in one manner or another to teach you that lesson from that point forward. Perhaps not in a dedicated manner, but rather passively, allowing you to learn by way of mutual existence. In many cases, this person teaches you life lessons through a third party, with whom he has left all his wisdom.
Rarely is the third person aware he’s being used in such a way, and almost never is the lesson a great credit to the teacher. Rather the third person fulfills the instruction in a way that leaves the teacher visible and exposed.
Today’s lesson reminds me of a proverb, “Once burned, no longer plays with fire.” Which brought to mind another proverb about “she who drinketh too much wine, delivers spoiled fruit.”
“While I labored to provide for the heir of the vineyard the grapes rotted on the vine.”
~Annonymous
As a writer, I often write from personal experience. Though I seldom actually name my inspiration, there are those who recognize themselves among the words. There are others, less knowledgable about my craft who imagine themselves to be a greater inspiration than they truly are, and miss connect their lives with articles that had nothing to do with them specifically. Those people ocassionally recognize their own characteristics among the slackards and drunkards who become antagonists in my work. Little do they know, I wasn’t writing about them personally, but rather about low-quality characters of ill repute of which they remind themselves.
Those who believe themselves greater than they truly are often recognize dispicable characteristics they’d rather others didn’t know. In-laws and out-laws are among these.
Jan Verhoeff
