The title is stolen from the Swinburn Stomp, off the Fugs First Album. (Great poem, worth listening to on youtube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykdn49CrcPI
So how does one go about learning? I mean really learning, you go to school, you read you interact with others and most importantly you experience. The latter is the topic of this blog.
I believe the most important life lessons I have learned have come from failures or very negative experiences. Perhaps the pain from not succeeding or the dealing with the less than pleasant experience is what really marks the soul and leaves that index point that we more easily remember once we have moved past the experience. Pleasant experience no doubt are also very instructive and lasting, but really is the lesson learned better preserved than that of the horrid experience? Not for me.
Listen, I need to be very clear here, I have lead a wonderfully charmed life with luck and richness that are embarrassing at times, but the lessons I hold dear, perhaps the ones I feel I have truly earned are those that had their teaching moment founded in ugly.
So if my premise is true, how should one go about learning the fine art of "good judgement"? The easiest way of course is to read a how-to-book, talk to folks who has good judgement (at least in your opinion), read widely of the classics ala "the Great Books" or perhaps attend a seminar. All of these sources will expand your views and broaden your judgement. Some of it will stick but I believe the most poignant are the lessons we learn from our actual experiences. What do we learn from the good, non-painful experiences? We learn the value of love, and caring and moral action, and can carry these values forward in our lives. But I just wonder if it isn't the really bad experiences that do the best job of driving the lesson home that are the ones that we literally take to the grave and maybe rely on more in our late 20 to 50's. I don't know as a fact, I just wonder.
So the leavening action of pain may indeed allow us to rise above the din of life and extract pleasure. I sure hope this is true. This is a more optimistic viewpoint as opposed to "you have to suffer to be able enjoy pain!" It's more of "out of this pain will come something good and perhaps pleasant."
