The cheap lesson.

Reminiscences about my mother would not be complete without mentioning the cheap lesson.  I often talk about how children learn from their parents' style of processing and dealing with various -- usually adverse -- situations.    Well, I still think horrible outcomes are "cheap lessons."  The assumption being that you'd learn from the horrible outcome and take steps never to do it/let it happen again.  My mom could decide that ANYTHING was a cheap lesson.  I remember as a fairly young teenager losing my first nice watch at the swimming pool.  It was a catastrophe!  In that day you didn't get a watch until you were 14 or so and it was expensive, say $35 or so, which would translate into around $200 now.  I was incredibly upset, crying over the loss, because I knew how expensive it was, and because I knew I had disappointed my parents.  (Not mention having unreasonably high expectations of myself.)  Anyway, after tons of raw emotion mostly from me, my mom deemed it a cheap lesson, meaning it would save me from losing something more expensive in the future.  It was almost magic to call it a cheap lesson.  Suddenly it was a learning experience and implicit was the expectation that I would have more and more expensive jewelry to lose in the future.  :)  

It's a wonderful way to reframe anything, so positive and optimistic about the future.  Anything can be a cheap lesson.  Wrecking a car -- you're still alive and won't do that again.  Ruining a marriage -- well, maybe some things are expensive lessons.  But in my mom's book, they were cheap lessons and we learned from them for the future.  I love it.