Lesson learned?

Another one today. Maybe.

Ironically, I was just reading a book on the airplane which contained this quote that I'd never seen before:

"The lessons of life amount not to wisdom but to scar tissue and callus."
- Wallace Stegner

It was timely.

He's right, I think. I don't believe you get wiser via life lessons, necessarily. Maybe I'm just building up callus, you know? ...by making the same mistakes over and over. And after a while that repeated mistake will simply stop hurting as much.

You have to be either pretty stubborn or pretty desperate to repeat the same painful behaviors again and again. I mean, who wants callus, anyway? It's ugly, and in some cases - deforming.

I do know that I have scar tissue from some of life's lessons. Here, see, I'll show you: this one's from when I was in high school and a bunch of us ... woah, never again, man! And this one here - it's from college when this girl ... how could I not have seen that coming? Blind! And, oh yeah, this beauty! Ow. I can feel that one yet. It's from when I found out that, no matter how much I wanted to, I just couldn't ... but, that does NOT define me anymore! No way!

See my point? Yes, I learned some things from life experiences. As they say, I have the scars to prove it. But then there are some scars that mark an experience where I don't think I learned anything at all. The only thing I got was pain and the scar. What did I learn, for example, when they told me I ... and what did I learn when she just ... and what in the world did I learn when I suddenly lost ... I learned nothing! It just hurt.

Perhaps, as time goes along, I'll look back and see something that indeed represents a lesson learned and wisdom gained from the experiences that left those particular scars. As they say, time heals all wounds. Sure. Yeah, eventually you die and that'll take care of it...

But mostly, as Stegner says, you're left with scar tissue or you build up callus. And I don't think experiences or life lessons is where wisdom comes from, either. Wisdom comes from another Source altogether.

So I don't think I learned much today. But I do feel the callus in that particular spot getting a little thicker. It's not as tender as the last time it got poked. So, lesson learned? Maybe. And maybe not. I guess we'll see if the callus keeps growing, or if that spot grows soft again.

I'd rather it be soft... even if it hurts now and then.