Experience

There are very few things that I'm good at but that doesn't stop me from attempting to do things that I choose to do. I'm pretty good at singing four part harmony, I have a good ear for that and some people tell me I have a really good singing voice. I'm good at yelling, being grouchy, and any other thing that doesn't take much talent. I have a lot of things that I like to do, such as write blogs, algebra, and teach bible class during class time at church. This past Sunday I learned that there is a fine art to teaching, or in this case moderating a bible class.

During the first five minutes of my class, I managed to make a couple of people angry at me, enough so to disrupt the class. I have to say I was a little taken by surprise by this and was left wondering where I went wrong. Now, I must admit I'm a little blunt, and I like to comment on things as I see them. In this case, I made these folks angry with me and then it went downhill from there.

As I have gotten older I'm trying to use my experiences as life lessons. Sunday was one of these moments and I would like to share my thoughts on what I learned.

When I become angry with someone, I need to settle down and hear what they have to say before I jump all over the speaker. I'm quite certain, had I been allowed to finish my thoughts these folks would have probably not been as upset with me as they were. I think they would have found out I have far more in common with them than I have differences. The bible says that we are to be swift to hear and slow to speak. This past week I learned that lesson the hard way; I've been on the other side of this many times and this incident will cause me to reflect more before I "jump on" someone again.

Another thing I learned is stating your opinion in public might get you in some hot water. Now, I've blogged about free speech before and I'm certainly not going to go whining now for causing people react negatively to something I've said. This confrontation has given me some actual experience in dealing with conflict. I'd rather have had the conflict in private but we're not always given a choice about that. This will not keep me from speaking in public but it will cause me to reflect some on my delivery methods. I will not lie, nor will I agree to something that I do not believe in, but I can word things in such a way not to cause a huge reaction to my opinion. This will also help me to not become "rattled" when given a challenge I wasn't expecting. This certainly wasn't something I expected, most especially in that venue and given the subject matter. I'll be more prepared for something like that in the future.

I think the biggest thing I learned was that I must not be defensive when listening to a speech. I'm quite sure these folks had some issues in their life that I probably touched on, or got on their toes a little. There have been many times where I've taken something more personal that I should have and have given negative feed-back to a speaker, when maybe I should've kept my mouth shut and took the lesson or speech as food for thought not a personal hit.

Experience is a hard teacher, maybe I've learned something from this.