Episode 1. Life is Like a Box of Chocolates
At school – they teach us the three R’s – reading, writing & arithmetic. But who teaches us about life – sometimes, it seems that we leave all that to chance. As Forrest Gump once said, …
At school – they teach us the three R’s – reading, writing & arithmetic. But who teaches us about life – sometimes, it seems that we leave all that to chance. As Forrest Gump once said, “Life is like a box of chocolates.”
So, who does teach us these stuff? Or we are somehow generationally doomed to repeat our parent’s mistakes? Have you ever seen the movie, ‘Forrest Gump’? It begins with a white feather up in the sky and it’s floating through the breeze. You know how a fine white feather dances in the breeze. It’s wafting along, it kind of has a sense of life being random, and it wafts along, and wafts along, further down, and further down, and it lands on Forrest Gump’s right foot. Forrest is sitting on a bench waiting for a bus by a park. And right from the beginning you can obviously see that the man is, well, simple. People come and sit on the bench and he talks to them, some of them want to talk and others don’t. He tells his life story and he offers them a chocolate. It’s a beautiful movie; it’s a must see. If you haven’t, go down to the video store and hire it.
You discover through the story, through the movie, that Forrest has been handed, well, a pretty rotten lot. I mean, you and me, we have some good things and some bad things happen, but Forrest is simple, his dad died early, and a whole bunch of really bad things have happened to Forrest Gump along the way and if you and I look back in our lives, we can remember the good things. We look at our Mums and Dads and most of us can say, well, there were some really good things that they gave us and did for us, and loved us but there were some bad things that I got handed down too. Maybe, a personality trait that you wish you didn’t have, but you do. And you look at your Dad or your Mum, and you think, “Ah, I know where I got that from.”
Maybe we have some insecurities because we weren’t loved properly or we have anger or we have sexual dysfunctional or we were never shown any affection so we can’t show affection to our loved ones. Maybe we had great parents, but they just … they just never taught us somehow to listen to other people, or how to work through struggles or how to deal with uncertainty. These life skills, maybe they were good parents. But well, their parents never taught them those things. It seems somehow, it’s like a box of chocolates, its like that white feather, it’s random, and it depends on who we got for parents.
I did a T. V. interview not so long ago, and I watched a video of it later and I was shocked to see a man sitting there talking, (it was me), that was an absolute spitting image of my dad. The mannerisms, I mean I had no idea. I looked at myself and I thought, “That’s my dad!” And people say to me, “you walk like your father walks.” And, he had some really strong points and he handed those down to me, but he had some weaknesses too, and as I grew up, I discovered two things. First thing, I happened to be very fortunate in that I’m intellectually very smart and I discovered that when I was at school, that my grades were always really good, and I was always right up at the top of the class. But I also discovered that I didn’t have some of the people skills that I needed. I am not, naturally, a good listener.
Naturally, when I was growing up, because I’m a talker, that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing now, because I’m a talker, I discovered that I talked over the top of people, that I really didn’t listen to what was going on inside them, in their hearts, their needs, the deep things. I was not strong on collaboration. I grew up thinking, “well, Berni, you are pretty clever, you can do this on your own, you can roll over the top of other people.” And so, collaboration and consultation, I just wasn’t very good at those things and I’ll tell you, I was very much into knee-jerk reactions; when a curve ball came at me, I would have this knee-jerk reaction and get angry with people.
So, I discovered that these people skills, these life skills, in me, were not as good as they needed to be. And I didn’t discover that because I got good or bad grades at school. I discovered that in the school of hard knocks, through life, and that school of hard knocks was about failures and crashes and, and broken relationships. And then it was a bit like that white feather, you know, that phenomenon on Forrest Gump, that sense of randomness, of chance, it seemed like a ‘luck thing’. But in my work, I all of a sudden met someone who would be my mentor; someone who through life would teach me some of the life skills that I needed to have.
He was very bright. His name’s Graham and he and I are on the same wavelength. We formed a consulting firm together, and over the years, he would sit me down and say, “Berni, that meeting we were just in with that client, do you know you didn’t listen? Do you know that you talked over the top of them? Do you realise that you did this and that? There’s another way of looking at that, there’s another way of doing this.” And so, he invested, over a period of 20 years, life teaching into my life; and I am forever changed and forever grateful for that investment. The art of mentorship, of an older man mentoring a younger man, of an older woman mentoring a younger woman seems to be a lost art in our society. If you are an older man or an older woman with wisdom, I would strongly encourage you, as something that will fulfil you incredibly – whether it’s with your kids or someone you work with, or a friend’s son or daughter; to invest in them as their mentor, to guide and to advise and to help and to grow.
Somewhere through all of that, I came to faith in Jesus. I met this Jesus guy and I came to a saving faith in God. And by that I mean I don’t just believe, I know … I know that I am forgiven by God in Jesus Christ and that because of what He did for me on the cross I have eternal life – nothing I did. I just met this Jesus and was so excited when He came into my life, and I’ve given my life to Him.
And I look back on those ups and downs, on my parents, Mum and Dad who did a whole bunch of good things; on the gaps somehow in my life skills, on that school of hard knocks, and the pain that was involved in those hard knocks; on Jesus coming into my life and on this mentor; this Graham, who came into my life to bless me. It looked random at first: it looked a bit like the breeze that blew the feather, but what I discovered was that there was a hand behind all of that. It wasn’t like a box of chocolates at all. In all of that randomness there was a steady, guiding hand, waiting, helping, steering, just at the right time speaking. Psalm 27 verse 10 says:
Although my father and mother have forsaken me, yet the LORD God will adopt me as His child.
Now, I’ve never been forsaken by my Mum and Dad, but we all end up with some gaps growing up and some people are forsaken by their parents, and the most unexpected thing of all is that God has His hand on our lives and Jesus has this wonderful learning for life; it’s never to late.
This week and next week on a Different Perspective we’re going to be looking at a whole bunch of things like; the blind spots we have and our inability to listen and our inability to communicate and collaborate, dealing with uncertainty. All of those life skill things that sometimes we miss out on, and we’ll be looking at them from a different perspective. Join me.
Comments
Margaretha Mauer
Thank you for a wonderful message – it really resonates. I believe God is working in this area and I recently became a fulltime worker for the Kingdom. I have been facilitating Christian parenting courses (www.evergreenparenting.co.za) for 8 years and your message is one of the key elements: teaching parents the communication and collaboration skills to pass on to their children. We have also expanded into teenage, family and adult workshops (www.talltreestraining.co.za) focusing on personal skills training. We even launched a Compasstionate Discipline Schools program(www.cdschool.co.za)! God bless you and your ministry.
Regards,
Margaretha