Growing Through Mistakes

“All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard word that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today,”
Ralph Ransom, author.
What will our children grow to become? How can we tell what their greatest accomplishments will be? No one can accurately tell, but they can be given every opportunity to grow. And some of those opportunities will be hard. They will be tough and will require a lot of ingenuity, compassion, heartbreak, longsuffering and work to get through. But those are the situations that will ‘grow’ them the most. Children, as they grow, will go through increasing hard circumstances. Any adult can attest to this fact. Is there something that adults, parents and educators, can use to illustrate this?
Aside from biographical stories and real life experience, other stories are available and invaluable. The tragic beginning and beautiful ending of a king and his kingdom is told in the tale The King and the Thief, one story within Paolo Tiberi’s Chronicles of King Argoz, Prince Ultan and Princess Maya. It tells of King Argoz who has grown into a selfish King mostly because he became accustomed early on to getting everything he wished for. King Argoz continued his lavish lifestyle with no knowledge that the taxes he imposed to pay for his parties and grandiose desires were impoverishing his people. When the King finds out his people do not love him, he doesn’t understand. He is accustomed to getting what he wants, and he wants the people’s adoration. He goes undercover to find out what is wrong. What he finds is hard to deal with. He sees firsthand the dire straits his people are in; he sees the destitution of a loving family and it nearly breaks him. He learns that his choices have hindered his Kingdom’s prosperity. While he was living in pomposity and riches, his people were starving. The King reached the hardest place he had ever been to. He crumpled on the floor and had to make the hardest, and possibly only, decision he had ever had to make in his life. He faced the situation headon, though, and made the hard choice to back out of his ways and change policies. He opened his storehouses and offered his aid and lowered taxes. He became a genuinely better person because of the growth he experienced during this eye-opening, status quo stomping, and heart-rending experience.
“It was through those times of growth that a once selfish man became known as ‘Argoz the Great.’”
Children today don’t like to face the hard times and neither do adults, for that matter. So many things are easy in today’s culture. Single-click shopping will provide even the most basic groceries to the door if we want. Debit cards and online bank accounts help do the work of managing money, even. So many things are too easy. But there is still the tough stuff, the stuff that bruises the heart and soul. Children learn a lot through these experiences. It may not be something that they are actively aware of, but teachers and parents can be aware and be on the lookout for the maturation in knowledge, wisdom, and worldview as the youngest generations face trying times.