I finally got some sense knocked into me. And I’ve got the bump to prove it.  — The Lion King

There isn’t a part of my body that doesn’t have a scar on it somewhere.  Maybe it’s the criss-cross of rake and hoe scars in my scalp from when I was 6 and decided to get into a fight with the neighbor kid.  Maybe it’s the big, long one I got as a teenager when I drove the heel of my foot up into a bathroom tub faucet.  No matter what, there’s a story for each of them, and a lesson I should have learned.

The reason there’s a criss-cross scar on my head is that I didn’t learn from the first time I got smacked upside the head with a garden implement.  Once the stitches were out and my mother wasn’t looking, I went back for more.  That is when I learned that unarmed fighting against someone who has a weapon sucks.

The scar on my foot taught me to always lock the bathroom door, especially when I’ve been playing ambush with a younger sibling and they might think it’s fun to ambush me in the shower.

Life is going to smack you upside the head sometimes, and it’s going to leave a mark.  Your job is to recognize when it happens, and learn from it.  There’s no shame in taking a knock the first time something happens.  The shame comes from not learning from the lump.