Someone has said: ‘Good judgment comes from experience. And experience comes from bad judgment.’ For us to awake each morning happy and confident, we probably didn’t need to do anything spectacular. We just needed to remember the ordinary glories we enjoy of life and love. When we open our eyes in the morning we have two choices. We can think, ‘This will be a beautiful day and I am going to enjoy it to the fullness. Or, we can think, ‘I wish that I wouldn’t have to get up and face life another day.’
This beautiful planet was created for our enjoyment and education, the place where we are to advance in the eternal plan of progression our Father has prepared for us. We need to get up and push on every day. We are given, on average, seventy some years to live and to learn. We are all aware that our life could be cut short anytime. The daily news verifies that, by reporting on the disasters that happen to people every day. Our chances for living out those seventy some years is much better if we use good judgment and by following the advice of wise people. I started this thought with the statement that: “Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement.” We would be wise to take the advice of those who have suffered the ‘bad experiences’, without having to suffer them ourselves. There will be plenty of times that those people will not be available to advise us when it is needed. We are then going to make a choice, a choice that will lead to success, or a choice that will lead to misfortune, the kind of misfortune that makes us wise. We can, with our new experience, provide wisdom for the neophytes to help them avoid that same bad experience. How many times, as children, have we heard from our parents, ‘Now be careful, if you do it that way you may burn yourself, etc.’ Some of us don’t wait to hear the advice and some of us don’t take the advice and end up burned and sorry.
I think of the time when I was a young man going through basic training, there were recruits who did not take the training seriously. Many of whom were sent to Korea, poorly prepared for the experiences that they were about to have. I have wondered if they were sorry they hadn’t paid closer attention to that ‘life saving’ training.
Much of our experiences in life are not life threatening and many times our training and our very observances help us to avoid harm and conflicts. To ‘poo poo’ education or basic training is folly. That is like walking down the center of the railroad tracks without ever looking back, without ever putting our ‘ear to the rail’, to listen for an oncoming train.
“Good judgment comes from experience. And experience comes from bad judgment.” There is far too much bad judgement and far too many who refuse to listen to experience. We read or hear about them every day, preventable tragedies, that cause so much heartache in families around the globe. “Slow down, but they speed on.” Good advice and good judgement are the two things that are going to make us wake up in the morning with a positive disposition and happy. Because they are the things that give us the confidence to feel that today will be a good day, a safe day, ours and our families.