Payin' Attention

Payin’ Attention           

By John W. Vander Velden

 

I spent some time talking to a person who told me that among his duties at work he was responsible for tasks he had no “official” training.  His co-workers asked how he knew those skills.  His response was he had worked with others and had paid attention.  I knew a man that became a foreman, getting the promotion over others simply because he paid attention.  He understood and could repair each machine on the line when others that had worked far longer couldn’t.  He had taken the effort to observe and to learn.

We live in a world that at times believes that all knowledge must come from the classroom or other places set up for teaching.  And much learning comes from those institutions.  But the problem is when we ignore the fact that so much training comes to us from the “school of hard knocks”. 

Life is happening all around us and the choice is ours.  Do we observe and learn or just slide by.  When I consider all the different things I have been asked to do, I remember the times when I learned on the fly.  When I took the things I knew, whether I learned them in the classroom or on the job, and built new knowledge to get the task done and in the process gained another skill.  Which is not to say that I didn’t make mistakes.  Sometime our fear of making mistakes keeps us from trying and not trying the greatest failure of all.  If we really pay attention then mistakes are just another learning tool.  But we must not only have the courage to try…knowing that at times we will fail, but we must objectively look at our failings so we do not repeat them.  That mean also admitting our weakness and failings, building strength through repetition…steps forward and steps back and steps forward again.

As for me I see my life changing, the things I must do take a different set of skills than past’s duties.  But I have not cast off the things I know, the things I have learned, the things years in the “mud and blood” of realities have taught me.  No, I give nothing away while gaining new abilities.  The years of farming are behind me, but they are not lost.  Memories of tasks such as repairing a feeder in subzero weather, of welding up jigs to pull together parts to be reassembled, of framing up walls, of plumbing and electrical jobs beyond number, these are skills I have not lost.   So as I sit more at the keyboard, I remember and I continue payin’ attention….   

(440 Words)                  12-12-2017