Blog # 112--Everyone Has Lessons To Learn

When our family visited the San Diego Zoo 25 years ago, we noticed a sign, partly hidden by vegetation, attached to a tall fence marking the zoo’s boundary. When we took a closer look, we noticed a school adjacent to the zoo. The sign, keeping with a typical zoo theme, described the school simply but accurately: “Primate Learning Center.” Schools are indeed learning centers for young humans, but they are certainly not the only resource for developing knowledge of ourselves and our world.

With intense competition for survival happening every second of every day, we are all in need of learning new ways of coping with problems. If something we do works to our benefit, we can learn to repeat it. We may even share it with others. If something doesn’t work, we can look for why it failed and then try something else. Or we can look for someone to help us.

Of course, some people don’t want to learn new things. If they are not naturally good at something, they won’t try it. They try to prevent change despite the fact change is constant for everything and everyone. But even that can be a lesson since eventually, circumstances may require a change. The pain of being blasted into a new perspective might encourage these people to accept gradual change, being a safer and less traumatic solution over time. If one lesson they need to learn is that everything changes, rest assured they will be confronted with this reality over and over until they understand and accept it.

There are a number of con artists and white collar criminals who seem to do a lot of winning, while their victims suffer the consequences. Those who invest their life savings into an untrustworthy hedge fund, for example, can learn to be cautious about future investments. They can learn to study the managers of various investments and how to see through deceit. They can also learn to be a little less greedy and consider safer alternatives. Of course, some repeat the same mistakes over and over. These people have a chance to learn the hard way how greed can destroy their future prospects.

White collar criminals who cheat hundreds of clients learn better every day how to deceive with impunity. They find out which people are most vulnerable to a good sales pitch and how to exploit weaknesses. Of course, once in a great while a corrupt business person may be caught, found guilty and jailed for his or her crimes. These individuals can learn the error of their ways and seek to atone for them. They may even try to balance their karmic indebtedness to their victims. Of course, others spend bitter years languishing in jail without committing to a law-abiding life. They cook up all sorts of extravagant schemes to try once they are free again. They learn to become better criminals.

As a society, we tend to subdivide people into good and bad categories. But in reality, we all have at least a little of each. Thus, passing judgment upon others who behave differently than us is hypocritical unless we also judge ourselves. This in itself is a great lesson for all of us. We might not wish to steal retirement money from strangers, but how many of us would refuse to take advantage of someone if the situation presented itself? If we would cheat someone or lie to them to gain advantage over them, then we are no different than those we jail for criminal activity.

That is a terribly difficult lesson for many of us to learn. We may rationalize it’s okay to keep the extra change a checkout person in a store gives us accidently, but this is actually a form of stealing from that company. We figure it’s okay to lie to protect ourselves, but we become incensed when someone else dupes us with an effective lie. We may not trust a neighbor who blows his dried leaves onto our yard, but we let our governments and militaries lie repeatedly because we think we need them for our survival. Our double standards can get us into trouble, but we often blind ourselves to that possibility.

Like I described in my book “It’s a Secret, So Pass It On: a Toolbox For Life,” the ego is self-centered and tries to separate itself from all others. By seeing ourselves as different than our fellow man or the rest of Nature, we create double standards that cause us and others great pain in the long run. Learning how to recognize truth within all the noise in our minds is a tremendously valuable lesson for us. So is learning to accept others as our equals.

If we’re going to cheat others, then we have opportunities to learn how to do it effectively. If our purpose is to defend ourselves against those who wish to cheat us, we can learn that. If our purpose is to accept all others despite their differences, opportunities for this outcome present themselves daily. Lessons are always available to everyone. All we have to do is take advantage of them when they present themselves.

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