It is often not important who is right

 

My first "aha" moment that I remember happened in Dauphin.  Let's face it.  A lot of good things happen in Dauphin so it not surprising that I remember my first example of wisdom happened in Dauphin.  

It was in Grade 9 and I was in Home Economics class.  Generally speaking, I learned so much in that class.  Home economics is so much more than just cooking and sewing.  If you took home economics and don't have atleast one life lesson learned, well, you likely never actually attended a class.  

Anyway, one thing cooking class taught me was that I came into the class knowing more than I thought.  It turned out my parents really did teach me the fundamentals of cooking, following a recipe, comparison shopping, and nutrition.  Having said that, I sure had a lot to learn and every class was very valuable and fun.  My label reading skills have never gone out of style and making delicious meals on a budget have been skills that I still use.  They have been modified slightly but the basics are still there.  I just never thought that I would love home economics as much as I did.  

Typically, we would cook a dish in a group of four.  The "aha" moment occurred while we were baking butter tarts.  Now, butter tarts was something that my mother and I made for our annual Christmas baking so this wasn't going to be much of a culinary challenge.  As we were making the filling and about to add a cup of raisins, one of my team-mates stopped us.  She told us of a trick that her mom had taught her.  Instead of adding raisins to the filling, put an equal amount of raisins in each tart shell prior to adding the filling.  This way every single butter tart will contain the exact amount of raisins.  

Frankly, this may have been the stupidest thing I ever heard of.  Who cares is you end up with one butter tart with 4 raisins and then 7 raisins in the next?  This will in no way affect your enjoyment of the butter tarts.  Personally, I eat them so quickly I could never differentiate how many raisins are in each tart.  Frankly, I am not a fan of cooked raisins so eliminating them all together would be my choice.  But, as a butter tart purist, the raisins have to be there, but not necessarily in an equal amount.  

Anyway, I was just about to tell my team-mate how stupid her idea was when I had the "aha" moment.  Since I really didn't care about how many raisins were in my butter tart, I shouldn't care if there was an equal amount in each tart.  Plus, I had to look at her face.  She was proud of this method which she learned from helping her mother.  Her method had sentimental value whereas the amount of raisins meant nothing to me.  The "aha" moment came.  My friendship with her was more important than being right.  If she wanted to do this, it really didn't affect me however, if I lost her friendship, that would affect me negatively.  Relationships are often more important than being right.  In that case, it certainly was.  

Life lessons are everywhere.  I certainly have not had a perfect record when it comes to this one, but, it is still nice to remind myself of this simple, yet profound life lesson and give myself a reset when I need it.