Episode 52: Wisdom or Shield

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Experience is supposed to teach us. It’s one of the benefits of getting older. We live through enough things that eventually we become better at recognizing what we don’t want to repeat. We make mistakes, get hurt, figure things out the hard way, and hopefully carry some useful information forward.

Some of that information is expensive. We pay for it with time, embarrassment, disappointment, heartbreak, or years spent doing something the hard way before finally figuring out an easier one. Of course we use what we learned. It would be pretty foolish not to.

But there’s an interesting problem with experience: it can only teach us from what has already happened. We then take those lessons and use them to make decisions about people, situations and opportunities that haven’t happened yet.

Most of the time, that’s exactly what wisdom is supposed to do. But what happens when life changes and the lesson doesn’t?

A Question I Couldn’t Shake

This conversation started with a comment on Facebook. I had asked people to share sayings or phrases that had stayed with them, and one person responded with a question instead:

“If the saying we remember most was forged by past pain, are we holding onto it as wisdom to grow, or are we just using it as a shield to keep ourselves from being hurt again?”

I loved the question immediately because wisdom or shield sounds like it should have an obvious answer. Wisdom is good. A shield sounds defensive. Surely the goal is to take the wisdom and eventually put down the shield.

Except I don’t think it works that way.

A shield has a purpose. If something hurts us, we adjust. We might become more cautious, observant or prepared. We learn what to watch for and what we don’t want to experience again. If those adjustments work, we keep them. Eventually, some of them become such normal parts of the way we operate that we stop thinking about why we started doing them in the first place.

The lesson worked so well that we kept it.

That doesn’t sound dysfunctional to me. It sounds human.

The Lesson Can Outlive the Circumstances

Think about who you were when you learned some of the lessons you still live by today. The version of you who learned them may have been living a very different life, surrounded by different people and working with far less information than you have now.

Maybe someone taught you to be careful about who you trust. Doing everything yourself meant you didn’t have to wonder whether someone else would come through, and being prepared helped make sure you weren’t caught off guard.

Those responses can become genuine strengths. Being prepared is useful. Independence can be useful. Paying attention to people and noticing subtle changes can be useful. That’s what makes these things so difficult to question. They may still be serving us incredibly well.

The circumstances that originally created them, though, might be long gone.

That’s the part I find interesting. We naturally update our understanding when something stops working. We don’t always think to examine the things that continue to work, even when they may be working much harder than the current situation requires.

Apparently the Lawn Must Be Mowed

This doesn’t always have to be heavy.

We were having company recently, which apparently meant I had decided our entire property needed to be ready for inspection. The lawn needed to be mowed, the pool needed to be vacuumed, things needed to be picked up, and I was making my way through all the things that absolutely had to be done before people arrived.

My husband looked at me and asked, “Why?”

My response was immediate: “I’ve always been this way. You know that. Now chop chop, we have work to do.”

And off we went.

I’m still probably going to mow the lawn the next time people come over. I like having things done, and I like looking around before people arrive and knowing everything is ready. There doesn’t need to be anything deeper or wrong with that.

What makes me laugh is my answer.

I’ve always been this way.

He asked me why I was doing something, and my answer was essentially that I’ve been doing it for a long time. That’s a pretty effective way to shut down further investigation without actually answering the question.

It also made me wonder how many things we do exactly that way. We don’t consciously choose them every time. We’ve done them long enough that they’ve simply become part of how we operate.

Not Everything Needs to Be Healed

There’s a tendency in conversations about personal growth to treat every protective behavior as something we eventually need to overcome or “heal.” I don’t particularly like that idea.

Protection can be appropriate. Being cautious can be smart. Boundaries can exist for very good reasons. If somebody keeps trying to climb over the wall, keep the dang wall.

Personal growth shouldn’t require us to forget what experience has taught us. If someone has repeatedly shown you that they can’t be trusted, you don’t owe them trust because you’re trying to become a more evolved person. If a boundary is protecting your peace, there may be absolutely no reason to remove it.

The goal isn’t to walk through life completely unprotected. The more useful question is whether we know when we’re protecting ourselves and whether that protection still fits what’s actually happening.

That’s where the shield metaphor works so well for me. You pick up a shield because something is coming at you. If something is still coming at you, hold onto it. But if the battle ended years ago and you’re still carrying the shield everywhere you go, it might be worth noticing how heavy it has become.

Noticing it doesn’t mean you have to put it down.

It means you get to decide.

When the Past Gets a Vote

There may be times when we catch ourselves responding to what’s in front of us as though it’s something we’ve already lived through. A new person gets treated according to what an old person taught us. A new opportunity gets measured against the last risk that went badly. We prepare for a problem that hasn’t happened because we know from experience that it can.

Knowing something can happen is valuable information. Living as though it will happen every time is something different.

The past gives us information. It doesn’t always deserve a vote.

I don’t want to throw away the things life has taught me. I’ve earned some of those lessons, and I want to keep them. I also don’t want a version of me from 15 years ago automatically making decisions for the person I am today.

Her lesson can come with me. She doesn’t always get to drive.

That distinction allows us to respect what we’ve lived through without assuming every new situation is simply an old one wearing different clothes.

We can remember what happened and still ask whether this is the same person, the same situation or even the same version of ourselves. Sometimes the answer will be yes, and that old lesson will be exactly what we need. Other times, we may realize we’ve been responding to something that isn’t actually happening anymore.

Wisdom May Be Knowing When the Lesson Applies

Maybe wisdom and a shield aren’t opposites at all. Some of our shields probably contain an incredible amount of wisdom. They exist because life taught us something worth remembering.

The difference may be in how we use what we learned.

Wisdom can remember that someone once broke our trust without deciding that nobody can be trusted. It can remember that a risk once went badly without assuming every risk will. It can remember that we once needed to protect ourselves without requiring us to remain on guard forever.

That doesn’t mean dropping every defense or giving every situation another chance. Sometimes the smartest response is to look at what’s happening and decide that the old lesson absolutely still applies.

The important part is that we’re actually making that decision.

What Are You Still Carrying?

You don’t need to go digging through every experience you’ve ever had looking for hidden reasons behind the way you behave. I certainly don’t plan to conduct a psychological investigation into why I need the lawn mowed before company comes over.

But it might be worth noticing one thing experience taught you that you still live by today. Maybe it’s a boundary, a rule, a way you prepare, or something you do to protect yourself.

Instead of assuming it’s something you need to change, ask a different question:

Is this lesson helping me respond to what’s happening now, or protecting me from what happened then?

There may not be a clean answer. It could be doing both. You might decide that you still need the shield exactly where it is.

You might also discover that something you’ve been carrying for years has already done its job.

Either way, the lesson doesn’t disappear. What happened still happened. What you learned still belongs to you.

You simply get to decide how much influence it has over what happens next.

Maybe that’s where the wisdom really is.

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