Good Example Of Turning Wounds Into Wisdom Essay

Experience is always an experience. It is through experiences that we learn and grow and expand ourselves. It does not matter whether it is good or bad one. This is exactly what I was told when I was little, this is what I was taught and in my love it has been shown to be true. Much time has passed since that time, and many bad things happened to me. Some of them were disappointing, another were disturbing, and, of course, there were frightening ones. Lots of such situations have happened and I know there will be thousands more. But I do not see them as problems; I do not consider them as serious obstacles. People are meant to overcome the issues that we face. Every bad experience is to make us stronger and wiser.
One of the most frightening experiences of my life happened when I was nine years old. Childhood experiences, especially traumatic ones stay with you throughout your life. The fact that I have chosen this particular experience to write about is proof enough of that. I had stayed after school to play with some of my friends. I lived close enough in order to easily walk back home. We were playing “Superman,” which is that we called the game where you swing as high as you can on the swing set and jump off. In hindsight, this was not the safest game to be playing, but when you are nine years old, the safety of an activity is furthest from your mind. My friends and I always tried our hardest to see who could get the highest. In a while, the sun had started to set, my friends began to wander off one by one to go home, until only I was left. Deciding I had one more jump in me, I kept swinging and swinging, getting as high as I possibly could. I continued to push the limits until I was sure that I was higher than I had ever gotten before. Then, I pushed myself off the swing.
I heard the sound before I felt the pain and instinctively I knew that something very bad had happened. Breaking the silence of the night was a resounding Crack! I heard the most unsettling sound that my ears up until that point had ever picked up. When my feet hit the ground, my left ankle rolled. But that was not the end of it. I tumbled over onto my side and looked down at my foot as I felt sharp pain work its way up my leg. Pulling up my pant leg, I saw my ankle start to swell up, and I did not have much control over my left foot. The pain began to steadily increase in the seconds following the crack. Putting any kind of pressure on it or touching it caused incredible, screeching pain. I started bawling; no one was around- I was the only one left. I tried to get up and put weigh on it but I fell back down again and started crying; the pain was so excruciating, like none I had ever felt before. I wondered if I would even be able to make it home.
As time passed, however, I knew that I had to go home. My house was only a couple blocks away, I thought to myself; I was used to walk home all the time. My parents knew I liked to stay out late with my friends, and it was not late enough that they would get too worried quite yet. Crawling to the swing, I pulled myself up and put all my weigh on my right foot, holding my left leg up, my sprained ankle making my left foot wiggle in the breeze. Moving from bar to bar, and object to object, I leaned on whatever I could as effectively limped my way out of the playground as if I only had one leg. Sometimes I would get on my hands and knees and crawl. Down the street I went – it was a small town, so no one was even out that point. For couple blocks I hopped down the street; it was painful and scary – I had no idea what I was going to do. I just wanted to get home.
When I was finally able to get home, my parents gasped and asked me what I had done. I told them honestly, and they got me laying down with an ice pack on my elevated leg. Later, the doctor would tell me I had completely sprained my ankle – a Grade 3rd sprain. Both my parents and I were extremely scared, but I was fine in the end. Moreover, when I got back to school everybody was jealous of my wound and other students thought it was pretty cool to have this injury. They kept asking me to tell this story again and again, and after all I started to add more and more details that did not actually take place. Eventually, the story has been extravagantly embroidered, and I was laughing telling it, and so were everybody else. So, even though this accident can be considered to be a “bad” experience, but there is a bright side – I have made man new friends. Not to mention the fact that when I got well, I was the best one in this game. However, this story still remains the most frightening to me.
These experiences at the time are extremely difficult to deal with, but in hindsight, I am happy that they happened. There are several things that I have learned. The first thing I understood was that we need to know our abilities. I do not have to test myself too much; I do need to develop and become better but this cannot extend beyond reach. What I must do is do everything possible to get as close to this limit as possible, but I have to be wise and make sure not to hurt myself. And the second thing, that I consider to be the most important one, is that I have learned how to work past pain and severe obstacles to reach my goals and get to where I need to go. Now I know that what it takes are a strong will and courage. This situation has taught me that sometimes we must struggle in order to move forward. There is a great phrase by Oprah Winfrey – “Turn your wounds into wisdom”. This means that we must learn from all the bad things that happen to us; every experience is helpful for us. We must concentrate on the lessons that such cases teach us. People must see bright sides even in bad situations. I believe this will help us to be stronger and more and more goals will seem reachable to us.