It Gets Better

Gun's Quote-of-the-Week:

“Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.”

-Mark Twain

I’ve been involved with the Missouri Boys State Program’s volunteer staff for 10 years. Two of those years were spent as an Assistant City Counselor, where I was on the “front lines” of working with the participants and guiding them through the program. The last eight were spent as an “Operations Liaison” between the Operations side of Boys State (Behind the scenes work, if you will) and the counseling side of Boys State. (The aforementioned guys who guide the participants through the program)

This year, we had our fair share of problems with Operations. People didn’t fill out forms correctly, a few procedures early on weren't followed, and the golf cart keys went AWOL on Sunday.

Despite the challenges, doing this for eight years demonstrated something that I haven’t ever really experienced before, at least not to the extent that I did this year. This year, I fixed the problems and handled all of the break-downs before they impacted any part of the program. Did I do this without help? Of course not. As with anything in life, you must work together as a team to accomplish a greater goal. Knowing what needed to be done, however, allowed me the flexibility to tap help when I needed it and to do what needed to be done. No panicking was involved. (Well, almost no panicking…) No climbing the chain-of-command. No looking up policies and procedures in the manual. The experience I had gained in years past really came to fruition this year. Problems and situations were put down and the program went on. Hopefully, most people didn’t even know there was a problem at all.

Contrast this with my “real” job where my experience is limited to six months and I know so little about what my boss wants that I have to bug him virtually everyday to make sure I’m doing my job right. He’s been unhappy (to put it nicely) with some of the work I’ve put out. The situation is painful to say the least and I shudder to think about the amount of time and money I have wasted (and will waste) because I simply don’t know what I don’t know.

The frustration level with knowing that you are somebody else’s burden is enormous. At times, I have wanted to give up. Yet, in this week that I volunteer to inspire and transform the lives of young people, I found that I myself walked away with a simple, friendly reminder and a bit of inspiration, too: It gets better.

There will be times when finding victories might as well be like finding a needle in a haystack. There will be times when you are criticized. There will be times of loss and frustration and struggle. When these things happen, you will look at the debris that is your life at that moment and wonder if you should keep on fighting the good fight. The answer to that question is yes. Why? Because it gets better.

Experience is not something you learn, can buy, or obtain through any other means than simply participating. It is a tool that is not manufactured or forged in even the hottest furnaces in the world. For some things in life, you simply have to tough it out by staying involved and not giving up.

So for those times when the thought of quitting creeps up on you, and those times when some challenges seem so daunting and undefeatable that you wonder if you shouldn’t just surrender, know that in the end that next battle will be a little bit easier, a little less daunting, and a little more manageable.

Know that it gets better.

…and that’s why it’s a Gun’s Quote!