Life is a learning curve. We are born helpless, and without somebody else’s help, we would die without ever knowing what life is about. If we are lucky to be born with a mother who loves us, provides for us, and wants us to grow into the best possible version of ourselves, we can be, or to grow up being happy with who we are.
Regardless of the future our mothers want for us, it is up to us to make that future happen. The following quote comes to mind when dealing with children’s futures, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” It’s only when the child wants the same future as the mother will there be a unity of cause. If not, there will always be conflict.
In today’s world, there are so many potential futures for our children, it would be unrealistic to pick one example that would encompass all the learning required to make even one of those futures become a reality; so I will pick a simpler topic, one where the only goal is to pass on their genes to the next generation.
The king of the African plane, the Lion.
The male lion is born to a loving mother; is loved, fed, and reared in a loving family called a pride until it is two years old, at that time its father or even its mother will chase the young male lion out of the family’s territory so that it will have no choice but to learn to survive or die in the attempt. This is the start of a huge learning curve for the young male lion. Over the next three to five years, the young lion will have to find and kill enough prey to live. He will have to stay out of the territories of mature males because he could easily be killed to prevent future competition. The lion will have to join a brotherhood because when they join together with other lions of a similar age who have the same goals, they have a better chance of taking over their own pride. Once a brotherhood has formed, they have hone their fighting skills by practising against each other so that when a real opportunity arrives they will be fit and strong enough to overcome adversaries and in the long-run be able to defend their own territories.
Only 1 in every 8 male lions born reach adulthood and is given the opportunity to take over a pride and pass on his genes to the next generation, this is a result of, survival of the fittest, and the fact that man has had a huge impact on the territories available to lions in the wild.
When they eventually take over a pride and territory of their own and start start to create offspring, they have to learn how to defend the position they have spent their whole lives learning to acquire. If they don’t, they will quickly find themselves replaced by younger and stronger competitors.
The lion has to learn how to hunt, make friends, learn to fight as a team, grow strong, and learn to defend its pride in order to accomplish it’s reason for living.”Passing on his genes to the next generation.” Once upon a time, man had similar goals for living, but that was a long time ago in simpler times.
Today’s man and woman have to do a lot more learning to acquire their goals of a family, career, houses, cars, and travel. These are no particular order because order doesn’t exist in today’s world.
This learning experience often takes place through failure. When a goal is not achieved using what we know, we learn from that experience, change our approach, and try to achieve it again using a different technique. This is the same in our personal and professional lives. We keep on learning and changing until we reach our goals. If we’re lucky, we will not reach all our goals because we all need a reason to live. I’ll leave you with one final thought;
We learn so much from failures. Although, to be honest, I’ve never heard anybody say they enjoyed the experience.
