Lessons Learned

Don't ever forget 
that the most important lessons that we learn 
are rarely taught in classrooms. 
They are learned through experience, 
through trial and error, 
success and failure, 
broken hearts that limp in paradiddles. 
They are learned in whispers at midnight 
and sitting silent at daybreak, 
soaked in the sun's first greeting. 
They are read and reread and read again 
until the truth saturates our souls 
and refuses to be wrung free. 
They are hidden under flower petals and 
tucked between stones still salty from ocean kisses, 
and they are carved into the side of every mountain. 
These lessons you learn will become a inextricable part of you, 
until you cannot remember a time when you didn't know 
the feel of sand beneath your feet 
or could not distinguish the songs of summer and autumn rains.