THERE’S A MESSAGE THERE SOMEWHERE

We were with my mother-in-law, taking her to lunch. I was driving and mother and daughter were reminiscing. The conversation turned to when Arlena was a little girl and one of her favorite toys was a child’s stove. One day she prepared a meal for her two older brothers who promptly refused to eat it. So she decided to give the meal she had lovingly prepared to the cat. The cat died.

There’s a message in that story somewhere. The obvious one for me is to not tell a very funny story while the driver is going fifty miles an hour down the highway. I laughed so hard I almost drove off the side of the road. Comedy should not be the fare for the open road; rather it should be when all are in a position to, if necessary, fall off our seats in laughter. Better safe than sorry.

It is also obvious that sometimes the best of intentions don’t turn out the way one had anticipated. Arlena at five years of age only wanted to please her brothers and certainly did not want to harm the family cat in any way much less kill the poor thing. But even so, back all those years, there is a lesson: be certain you know what you are doing ahead of time; and, if you are not and the action turns out disastrously, learn from your mistakes.

Arlena to this day loves to cook. She is always aware of the ingredients in everything she serves. Is that awareness somehow the result of her killing the cat back all those years or because she is a nurse and nurses have this innate need to make certain everything they allow us to put into our mouths is somehow beneficial and certainly not deadly? I can’t answer that and for the most part am thankful for her oversight of my personal health even when it means there is no junk food around when my body craves it.

But, then, of course, on the other hand, we often forget the lesson that we have learned, very quickly, too, and go on repeating our mistakes until it’s not the cat who suffers from our foolishness but we ourselves. Sometimes by then it is a little too late because the damage has been done and we cannot reverse what our negligence has caused. Yes, we admit, we should have stopped but did not and now have to live with the inevitable and painful and perhaps tragic consequences.

Life’s lessons come at us often when we least to expect to be taught. We learn those lessons even though, at the time, we neither understood that there was something being taught nor that we were actually absorbing that lesson and making it part of the way we lived. It is only in hindsight that we realized what had happened back than and are simply thankful for a lesson learned while unaware.

On the other hand, when we observe what happened from even a good intention – the cat died – we may learn nothing from it. Life’s lessons come to us in all shapes and forms and circumstances. How we respond can set the course for our life.