Every Bad Experience Is Actually a Learning Experience

By: Zahoor-ul-Islam

I had lower back pain for the past two weeks. The doctor suggested an MR. After a fairly long wait, I finally got the insurance approval for the MRI, and so I finally went to get it done at the appointment time.

I went to the MRI information desk. I was informed just a little while before my appointment time that I needed to bring some document from the insurance department for the paperwork. I had to rush to the insurance department at the eleventh hour!

Upon reaching there, I discovered that they had misplaced the papers. But anyways, they created a new one. I got the document stamped at the accounts department, came back to the insurance department; they punched in something on the computer, stamped the document, and finally the paper was ready for me to take back to the MRI!

In the whole process I was acting like a messenger transporting papers from here to there. They had all the information and there was nothing required from me.

Obviously this whole thing was very frustrating. It became even more frustrating when I finally reached the MRI room and the guy there started asking me very basic questions such as, my name , age, why I needed to get the MRI done and what the problem actually was, what sort of pain etc etc. I was about to explode, however I kept my cool.

The whole process seemed ridiculously mechanical and extremely frustrating to me, where everyone acted dumb but with a nice smile on their face.

Finally I was inside the MRI machine and the scan began. Although I was still in a bad mood, a totally different perspective of the whole situation suddenly dawned upon me.

I suddenly realized that when all the people were acting dumb and mechanical I had the opportunity to act smart and intelligent. Moreover, all the people around me were there to help me out.

I was like the main CPU of the computer to make intelligent decision having communication with the different passive components and it was up to me to get my experience better. I had the room to act rather than to react like passive component in a system.

We expect others to smile at us, why don’t we first smile and receive the same, why don’t we drive our lives and experience rather than wait for others to improve our experience. Those 20 minutes of waiting could have been different if I had just focused on the objective to get the MRI done and to identify the root cause of my problem. I needed to realize that after all, those people were there to help me; they were all doing their duties to get my MRI done, to solve my problem and to get me out of pain. Isn’t everything there for me?

Allah has created a world around me to help me out. He put people, processes, and facilities around me and make made me the Centre of the universe.

The moment I aligned myself, I felt like a king! I realized that everything around me was working for me. God is all the time helping me, talking to me in different forms. He is just everywhere, every action around me is a message to act, learn and grow more maturely and responsibly.

What else do I want, when everything is working for me? Just like when a toddler starts walking, he falls but parents don’t stop him since it is a part of the learning process.

I wonder how many such avenues of learning we miss everyday by looking at the problem with a negative perspective. Every bad experience is not a bad experience; it is actually a learning experience.