experience

I remember when I was burned severely as a teenager. My friends didn’t think they could handle it if it happened to them. And I remember realizing at that point and afterwards that ‘handling it’ is much more about what you take from the experience than going through the experience. Going through ‘the experience’ is often pretty automatic in some ways especially if you are in intense pain, turmoil or grief and you are not always consciously thinking about how to ‘handle it’. But, who do you end up being afterwards – Better or bitter, courageous or more fearful? That is the important question.

Anyone have an experience like that?

Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com

“Experience is not what happens to a person. It is what a person does with what happens to them.” – Aldous Huxley