(A dramatised version of our conversation...)
"What?! You mean you just said yes just like that? Without knowing how much you're going to get, without knowing how many days a week...?"
"Uh... yeeeeees."
"What if the guy offers you only $400? What if he wants you to work 7 days a week? Ok, I'm just being dramatic... but you see what I mean?"
"Mmm... yesh... that means I might have made myself a slave of the company..."
"My dear Yeu Ann, you may have just made yourself a PEON of the company..."Yeu Ann lands his first job... and here's his job description.
The label of Peon denotes the lowest station amongst those in the Orcish Horde. Inferior in all skills of worth, these dogs are relegated to menial tasks such as harvesting lumber and mining Gold. Their labor is also required for the construction and maintenance of buildings necessary to support the vast undertakings of the Horde. Downtrodden, the Orc Peons slave thanklessly to please their overseers.
But on a more sober note, thank God for Peter. He suggested that maybe I might need to change the way I learn from my experiences. Because currently how I try to learn from my experience is via remembering past events that happened - e.g. social boohoos... but the problem is, when I enter new situations with a twist, I end up making the same social boohoo.
And like how I made decisions hastily on the spot - repeating the same pattern again after a "near-miss" Cuban-Missile-Crisis style experience a few weeks ago due to some hasty decision on the spot...
So the better way to learn from my experiences is through thinking about the incident, and what principles I can extract from this.
Now that I'm typing this, an example of what it means to extract principles can be found in Proverbs 24:
"I went past the field of the sluggard,
past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgment;
thorns had come up everywhere,
the ground was covered with weeds,
and the stone walls was in ruins.
I applied my heat to what I observed
and learned a lesson from what I saw..."
You know, it just struck me. This principle of extracting principles can also be applied into studying. Hee. Like how some people keep on mugging but they end up getting slaughtered in the exam halls. It's not because they didn't work hard enough. But it could be because they didn't capture or understand the principles behind what they learnt.
Perhaps that's one thing about the Singaporean education system - while it does well on knowledge, it needs to help students learn to extract principles on their own. Sorta like teaching a man to fish, not just giving him fish.
Peter also observed that my journal tends to list a lot of experiences, but is pretty low on making sense of my experiences, especially the principles that I can learn from these experiences.
*******
So something I want to thank God for today is that I finally realised how to most effectively learn from my past experiences is not by trying to remember events - but rather, the principles that can be learnt from these experiences.
Melancholics like me would tend to start dwelling on the events themselves, and missing out on the invaluable principles that can be learnt from these experiences. Best if you can also learn from other peoples' experiences (bad experiences too!)... just like what Prov 24 advises.
Gosh! I realise I've been "hard-coding" myself with a whole bunch of situational "if-else-then" clauses since young... when wisdom says that it's far, far better to extract the principles from what you experience... that's something I learnt in Artificial Intelligence too. So I guess a computer may be smarter than me sometimes... :P
Thank God also for Peter's encouragements during that time. Really really felt very encouraged. Because he encouraged me that I'm not a goner, I'm simply learning in progress! And that even though I had to "retake" the test... hee, it will come around again - and I will pass the same test this time around, by God's grace! :D
So one principle of encouragement I learnt from this experience: help the person know that even in his/her current state, it's ok - it's never too late to get up and keep moving on.
Peter also reminded me that reflecting on my experiences to see what principles I can extract is a HABIT. And this good habit can be done in very small pockets of time... e.g. when I'm waiting for someone, or travelling or etc...
Hee, so something I also learnt about making sense of my experiences is not just looking back to see where God has been leading me too, but also looking forwards, to extract as many principles as I can learn... no wonder the book of Proverbs is so full of principles. :D
So touched, because I can see how God has been faithfully answering my prayers to give me wisdom and maturity.
Just feel that this experience today is going to be the start of a quantum leap in my growing in wisdom and stature. :D And I know I'm not alone in this struggle to grow, because when I do my part, Daddy will take care of the greater part!
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