Trust & Heed Wise Counsel

The Wise Listen to, Trust, and HEED Wise Counsel

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an ARTICLE about an experience where I failed to listen to that still, small, voice of warning within, in conjunction with the cautionary whispers of my own, common sense. The result of this failure led to one of my peers getting into a serious accident that broke his hip.  

Click HERE to review the post: Trust that Inner Voice of Warning.  

Today's blog is incidentally and thematically similar to that previous article. This time, however, I wish to emphasize the importance of both trusting and heeding wise counsel from other people who have more knowledge and experience than you do.

I spent the first seven years of my life growing up in Monticello, Utah, a rural farming and ranching community on the edge of the Colorado Plateau in Southeastern Utah in the Four Corners area of the United States. 

Click HERE to read The Riches of My Rural Roots.

At age seven (7), my family moved to Mesa, Arizona, where I attended grades one through seven. During the summer months, however, we spent most of our time in Utah, including in Monticello. Parts of those childhood summers were always spent with my cousins (The Bunkers) who lived across the street from the house where I was born and raised to age seven (7) and then lived again later from grades 8-11. 

Over the years, my Bunker cousins raised a variety of animals on their property or elsewhere. These animals included dogs, cats, sheep, chickens, pigs, steers, horses, and mules. One summer, in particular, they acquired a ram in addition to their small sheep herd.

My cousins, who had knowledge of and experience with this ram, warned me to NOT get inside the fence where the ram lived and grazed because he would charge after me and "RAM" me if I did. 

Being the wise and intelligent 10-year-old that I believed myself to be, I decided to disregard their warnings. "After all," I reasoned, "My cousins are probably exaggerating the ram danger in order to try and scare me." As a result, I was not convinced the ram would really try to RAM me if I got inside the fence with it. 

But... 

     I  WAS  WRONG! 

Immediately after letting myself down on the side of the ram side of the fence, the ram immediately began to charge after me at what seemed like a great speed.

And I PANICKED! 

Being a slender, distance-runner body type, my greatest physical talents have always involved speed rather than strength. Consequently, when physically threatened, I have always been more of a "negotiator" or a "flighter" than a "fighter." Knowing that my negotiation skills would be useless with a mute ram, and  intuitively sensing I was no match for the ram strength-wise, I spontaneously resorted to my speed to save me in what seemed to me at the time to be a moment of great peril. 

Accelerating my pace to an all-out sprint, I raced with all my might across the field towards safety. 

However, a significant obstacle stood in between me and safety from the charging ram. The obstacle was a barbed wire fence, which I judged to be too high to safely hurdle.

Nevertheless, fearing the charging ram more than I feared the barbed wire fence, I decided my best bet was to shoot the gap in between two of the fence wires and somehow slide and shimmy my way through the fence while racing at breakneck speed. 

Risky though my plan was, I concluded it was my only viable option in escaping the wrath of the charging ram. 

When human flesh makes contact with
a steel barb, the barb always wins!

To my great relief, I managed to somehow make it through the fence before the ram caught up with me. To my great chagrin, however, the left-hand side of my upper right leg—just a few inches below my groin near my gracilis muscle—had caught hold of one of the sharp "barbs" on the fence on my way through, leaving me with a long, bleeding gash.

I hardly felt any pain at first because my adrenaline had been pumping so fast and hard, but I soon discovered my wound and realized it was not a small scrape, but a large open wound—the likes of which I had never before experienced.  

Grateful and relieved to have safely outrun the ram, but embarrassed by my significant wound, I limped back to my cousin's house where I washed and dressed the gaping gash in my leg. In hindsight, I really should have gone to the hospital for stitches and perhaps even a tetanus shot; but my parents were out of town at the time and I hid the extent of my wound from my aunt and uncle with whom I was staying, assuming it would heal up soon enough if I simply kept it clean and bandaged properly—an ongoing process I managed independently until the gash had healed and scarred over.

Fortunately, I did not incur any long-term consequences for lack of a tetanus shot and/or other relevant medical treatment. However, to-this-very-day, I carry an enormous scar that measures four inches long and a half-an-inch wide on the left side of my upper right thigh. The size and extent of the scar resulted from my failure to get stitches that fateful day in June of (circa) 1990. I am fortunate the scar is in a well-hidden place where others never have to see it.    

This scar is a continual reminder to me of that foolish and easily preventable accident of my youth. It is furthermore an ongoing reminder of the importance of TRUSTING and HEEDING wise counsel from others who have more knowledge and/or experience than I do.

My cousins had more knowledge of and experience with that ram. They knew what would happen if I climbed over the fence and got into the same space as the ram; and they warned me of this fact on multiple occasions. If I had simply trusted and heeded their warnings, I would have saved myself from a lot of fear, anxiety, pain, and regret from the events and consequences that accompanied my foolish decision that summer evening so long ago.  

Fortunately, this experience did not lead to a serious injury or death. But think of all the people throughout history who have been seriously injured, killed, or been the cause of serious injury or death to another person (or people) because they failed to trust and heed wise counsel from those who had more knowledge and/or experience in a given situation than they did?  

My experience with the charging ram that day taught me an important lesson I've never forgotten: taking unnecessary risks is just not worth it; the potential consequences are too painful and scarring. It is so much better—and so much WISER—to humbly listen to, respect, and hearken to the wise council and advice of those who have gone before who have more knowledge of and experience with whatever life adventures lie before you.  

I hope you will learn this lesson without having to get a long, wide, and deep scar like me—or worse. But if it does require a similar lesson for you to learn this great truth, I hope you will take your learning experience seriously, and allow it to empower your avoidance of similar mistakes in the future... and then pass along your wisdom and experience with others at relevant opportunities.    

—Dr. JJ

April 12, 2023

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA

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