Life's Little Lessons: With some not so little

Book excerpt: Life is not performed in a vacuum. The individuals you interact with all around you, plus the social and physical environments you live in, all impact who you are now and who you will become in the future. While these collectively are all unique influences in your personal development, it turns out these factors are only part of a set of what I refer to as lessons that everyone is exposed to and allowed to integrate into their personality, at their choosing. Together, they essentially become the building blocks of your existence and help to determine how well you will and can participate in your ever-changing social and physical environments. These lessons are among a common set where each will be experienced by the majority of us in a different randomized order further individualizing each of us since no two individuals experience the same things in the same ways at the same times. Fortunately, it is in this myriad of possible experiential events and our interpretations that help create the depth of our personality and social presence and as such, collectively for the overall population, the enhancement and continued survival of our species. It is in the responses and reactions created through our experienced stories where we learn to understand who we really are and how best we are to live and work in the complex and interwoven environments that we exist in. This book consists of a series of short stories, lessons, that impacted my life and the lives of the many others that came in contact with or participated in these stories. It is hoped that reading this book will help the reader realize the importance of these lessons and how attention to their details in your own life will enhance and encourage your continued development. This book contains a chronological set of lessons experienced personally that represent my development into maturity. These lessons start with my earliest memories and conclude with some that initiated the development of my professional career. While this book is not a complete list of those experiences, it does contain several that were prominent in my development, where each has an associated story that helps to frame the lesson learned. These lessons at a minimum will hopefully create smiles and possibly stimulate some recognized memories of similar events in your own life.