Awareness

I toured a local olive mill today, and the tour guide explained that they never make olive oil from olives that have fallen on the ground.  He said that by the time they fall off the tree, they are either infested with pests or too ripe to use anyway.  Rather, they harvest the olives with a rake before they ripen too much, while they are in their prime.

That got me to thinking that many people follow that same path when it comes to learning lessons.

We are ripe for the learning while we are still on the tree–that is to say, while the lesson is presenting itself, and we have the opportunity to consciously learn from it.  But often we wait until we have fallen from the tree and the pain is upon us to register that it’s a lesson at all.   Perhaps if we could be more aware during the process, we could spare ourselves some heartache and stay up in the sky just a little bit longer.