Learning about consequences
At some point in your life, you have to learn to look ahead to the consequences of your actions. When I was about three or four, I found this pretty little green stone on my mom’s vanity table. It wasn’t a jewel or anything, it was more like a smooth novelty stone you find in some souvenir shops. It was a jade color and I picked it up and used it like a crayon to scratch into my moms soft wooden table.
After scribbling a while, my mom routinely walked in to check on me. I don’t think I looked up and saw her reaction but I remember how composed she suddenly made herself. She always had unlimited patience with me, even when I was being a butt. Her voice was a bit different. She said “Michael look what you have done to my table. You’ve scratched it and hurt the wood. It can’t be fixed. You really need to think about what you are going to do, before you do it.”
As a three-year-old can, I looked at my handiwork and realized, she was right. I messed something up, something that wasn’t mine. I didn’t mean to. I just wasn’t thinking. Punishment wasn’t necessary here, it was a very important life lesson right there in progress. I ruined my mom’s table because I didn’t think outside of myself. I could think about the future when I do things. It was if my mom’s words actually opened up that capability in me. That capability or new awareness just needed words put to it before it could exist. Was it a sense of time and restraint she had just given me?
Many of us do bad things, often because we are selfish. Sometimes our actions are completely unintentional. Now because that moment stuck in my mind, does that mean I learned the lesson? I’d like to think so, but it’s just not true. Remembering the moment occasionally is sweet, but learning the lesson is continuous. And when you get to a certain level, you realize that it’s pretty easy not to do bad things. The next level is creating a discipline of thinking ahead to see how much good you can accomplish in the time you have, whether it be a day or month or year.
