Shocking

Today at work, Gus decided it would be fun to chew on my space heater cord shocking himself thusly. I guess that'll teach him.

But isn't that how most people learn? We don't believe that something will hurt us until we feel the pain for ourselves. We don't believe that someone else might be right until we're feeling the effects of our bad decision.

It's almost like we've lost faith in other people. We've lost faith that someone might know better than we do or have more experience than we do. Or maybe we're just too damn stubborn and set in our ways to think that someone else might be right.

I'm going to go with the latter. We're a generation of do'ers. I will speak for myself and say, I'm headstrong and I "know" everything. At least I think I do, and it literally takes all my energy to shut my stupid mouth sometimes. I want to be right. I want to know everything.

The beauty is, is that I don't have to know everything. No expects to me have all the answers. What they do expect is for me to shut up and listen and learn. Because you can't learn if you're talking. And you're not listening if you're always trying to prove you're right. If you can do that a little bit everyday...learn something, that is...then eventually you'll be the one that everyone is listening to.

It was hard to learn that charging ahead, doing things my way, was like biting into a electrical cord. But that quick shock of failure is always enough to snap me back to reality. Live and learn.

And Gus...stop chewing on damn cords. Please.