If you've been following for a little while you may have read about my accident I had many years ago that kinda changed my life. On my journey to recovery, I figured out it was more of a journey to discovery with a bit of rehabilitation thrown in for shits and giggles.
There are certain experiences that change the way you look at life so dramatically that the change in you is profound even to yourself and can often feel as though something happened overnight.
These, I call moments of realisation... or realization for my United States of American readers.
My first moment of realisation came at a very early age. When I was about 9 in fact. I was in school at Luther Burbank Elementary school around Monrovia (somewhere near L.A.) It was the start of my 4th year of school. I was never with the crowd.
Every Monday we were to head to the school library, find a book we liked, read it and submit a book report at the end of the week.... usually Friday.
While the other kids picked Where's Wally and Find Spot. I picked books on making rockets, batteries from lemons and things like that which got me into trouble with mum for stealing the produce from the kitchen to conduct these fascinating experiments.
After a few weeks of this, the teacher caught on that I wasn't 'reading' normal books. Her exact words were "Steve, these aren't suitable books for children."
My response was "Then why are they in our school library?"
She didn't like that. I ended up having to explain myself to the principal, who also didn't get it and I ended up being forced to read what the other students read. However, I just ignored the books completely and didn't read at all until only a few years ago, picking up my first book at the age of 29. Twenty years later.
My moment of realisation in that situation was that there are a lot of silly people that often times think they are helping, only to ruin things. Similar to how the man finds a cocoon, notices the butterfly attempting to break free and helps it only to find that the butterfly will not fly, it's wings stay crumpled and deformed. For if it were not for the 'helping' hand, the butterfly would struggle on its own, pumping the much required muscles full of blood and oxygen to break out of the cocoon and fly away.
My moment of realisation was that school wasn't going to help me.
So I drifted through primary school, survived junior high while being stabbed in the arm for being a white boy during the L.A. riots and I lived in an okay part of town. I was ready to leave everything I knew to come back to a place where things made more sense.
But school is school and it never made sense, for it was years later in high school where I was studying Physics and doing rather well at it. Exceptionally well. Yet, somehow, despite my previous year in Mathematics, I did poorly during my final years.
That is, until one day I got pulled out of Maths by the head of Mathematics. I was asked as to why I was failing Maths?
My response was honest. My previous years teacher would take the time to teach everyone in class from the basics right up to the level you were studying. At the end of the week you had no excuse for failing. And even the losers in the corner got B's or higher. The teacher was excellent. He was a teacher.
My final years Maths person was just that, a person with a maths book in their hand.... who funnily enough showed up at a near by cafe about a month ago. I didn't speak to him. However I never understood the maths he 'taught' and subsequently failed it.
Thought when the head teacher spoke to me, he said that I would have to drop Physics because I was failing maths. This defied all the logic in my body. So, I was back in the 4th grade again. Dealing with the same scenario 8 years later. I looked at the head teacher and said "So, you're dropping me out of a subject I'm succeeding in and keeping me in a subject I'm failing?"
He nodded with agreement. I nodded with his ignorance and my new moment of realisation was born.
If anything, I have only learnt to deal with issues like this and people like this.
Something I held close to me as a negative experience, has in fact become a positive skill I have that a lot of my mates ask me about, "How can you have so much patients?"
My true moment of realisation came when I realised that I can use my patients to help people. Now I just need to figure out how. And why?
2 comments:
I am PIP hear me roar, you are too good to ignore... and so on and so on. I agree with you 100%
hahah.
It's funny, a mate I've been chatting to for years has finally sorted himself out, and another one pops up out of the blue with issues. Especially as this person was always known as a pretty level headed and stable person.
And today I was meeting with someone whom I know through my business network that turned out to be struggling very poorly. While I might look back and think "Steve, look after yourself first" It is my nature and my first reaction to help him out. So I gave him a bucket load of suggestions to help improve his business. I'll continue to help as much as I can. Him being a mechanic, one of the suggestion I made was he have an open night for men and women who want to learn how to change a tire, check their oil, and so on. I've offered to help out on the night too, because I'm an ex-bike mechanic.
He was so appreciative. Yet, I couldn't really see how. I was just helping. But to him it was massive.
A person I met a little while ago told me I should drop IT and be a Life/Business coach. When I read into it, it sounded like me. Perhaps there's a third career coming. :)
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