Wisdom Without Struggle? Is it possible?

By: Bradley Binversie

All parents want their children to have the wisdom they have without having to experience the pain and struggle that they’ve had to endure to gain that knowledge.

I’ve known many successful and accomplished people. Almost all of them have hard-won wisdom that they’ve acquired through experience and struggles. I’ve never heard any successful person say that their journey was easy. They’ve all encountered periods in their lives with challenging circumstances, uncertainties, doubts, and times where they didn’t know how to continue. But through all the difficulties and obstacles, they were able to show an enormous of grit and emotional fortitude. They persevered, continuously learning from their mistakes and were able to adjust, tweak, or completely change their paths.

Experience is the ultimate teacher and there is a tremendous amount of wisdom to be gained through it. Yet, as parents we want to spare our children the pain and difficulties that we’ve endured to gain that wisdom. Building grit, resiliency, emotional strength, and obtaining wisdom are difficult and take hard work. I don’t know that it is possible to do without experiencing it.

I don’t believe every generation has to start at 0, but I have a young family, so this is something I think about frequently and have significantly more questions than answers. Questions like:

1. How do you balance the interdependence of being part of family while still encouraging independence? This sounds like a contradictory statement, but it’s important for a person’s own self worth and strength to be self-sufficient and recognize that they are their own unique individual who is also a part of the larger collective family.

2. How do you balance between being supportive and loving while encouraging your children to grow into emotionally strong people who can handle and tackle complex problems that life throws at them? As much we want to handle things for our kids, life is going present difficulties we cannot protect them from such as: an unexpected death, professional challenges, relationship and marital issues…ect. So how do we make sure they are equipped to handle the tough times they will face?

Because I do not have the perfect answer, here’s what I’m going to acknowledge. Parenting is complex and a challenge. But it’s the most important thing I will ever do. As much as possible I want my children to feel loved and supported while still encouraging them to embrace and deal with difficulty. While I’d like spare them the pain, mistakes, and challenges; I understand that the only way to acquire hard-won wisdom is when it is HARD-WON.