By: Chioma Madonna Ndukwu
“Experience Is the Best Teacher” — But Must We Make Every Mistake Ourselves?
“Please, don’t sign that paper yet.”
Her son looked up from the document in his hand.
“Mummy, I’ve read it.”
“I know you have read it. Read it again.”
He laughed and dropped the paper on the table. “Why are you so worried?”
“Because I know that kind of arrangement.”
“You know everything now?”
His mother shook her head. “No. But I know what happened to me.”
I was sitting in the room when the conversation started, and I could see that the young man was becoming impatient. He had been excited about the business opportunity all morning.
He had met the man behind the proposal, liked what he heard and was already imagining what the extra income could do for him.
His mother was not convinced.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I have made this mistake before. Don’t put your money into something until you understand exactly what you are getting into.”
“Mummy, you made your mistake. I will make my own decisions.”
She looked at him for a while.
“Experience is the best teacher, isn’t it?”
He smiled. “Exactly.”
“Then answer me one question. If somebody has already been bitten by a snake and tells you where it is hiding, must you put your hand there before you believe him?”
He laughed. “That is different.”
“How is it different?”
“Because this is business.”
“So was mine.”
That silenced him for a moment.
His mother reached for the document.
“You see this agreement? The person I went into business with also sounded convincing. He spoke well. He had plans. He knew how to make the numbers look beautiful. I was excited too.”
“What happened?”
She hesitated before answering.
“I lost my money.”
The room became quiet.
“How much?”
She mentioned the amount.
He stared at her.
“Mummy, you never told me it was that much.”
“I didn’t want you to know.”
“Why?”
“Because I was ashamed.”
That was the first time the young man stopped looking at his mother’s warning as interference. He sat down properly and listened.
She told him how the partnership had started with excitement and ended with unanswered phone calls.
She told him about the day she realised something was wrong, the calls she made, the promises she kept hearing and the moment she finally understood that the money was gone.
“I spent months trying to recover it,” she said. “There were nights I would lie down and calculate the loss in my head. I kept asking myself why I didn’t listen to the people who warned me.”
Her son lowered his eyes.
“You didn’t tell me all this.”
“You never asked.”
That sentence stayed with me.
How many times do we reject somebody’s advice without asking what gave birth to it? We hear an older person say, “Don’t do this,” and we assume they are simply being afraid for us. We rarely stop to ask, “What happened to you?”
Sometimes the story behind a warning is more valuable than the warning itself.
The young man picked up the agreement again.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Nothing?”
“Investigate. Ask questions. Check the company. Find out who owns it. Let somebody who understands contracts read this. Don’t allow excitement to make your decisions for you.”
He smiled.
“You have become a consultant.”
“I became a consultant after paying my school fees.”
We all laughed.
That was the first time the tension in the room disappeared.
But the conversation reminded me of something I have heard many times: experience is the best teacher.
Is it?
Experience certainly teaches us. Sometimes it teaches us through joy, sometimes through disappointment, and sometimes through a lesson that costs far more than we expected.
But must every lesson be paid for personally?
A young woman does not have to marry the wrong man before believing a friend who has spent ten years recovering from a destructive marriage.
A young man does not have to lose his savings before listening to someone who has already lost theirs.
A person does not have to become trapped in debt before understanding that living above one’s income has consequences.
Somebody has already walked that road.
Why insist on walking it blindfolded?
Oscar Wilde once captured the irony of experience in Lady Windermere’s Fan: “Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
The words made me smile when I first encountered them because there is truth hiding inside the humour. We often celebrate experience without asking what it cost the person who gained it.
There are lessons that come cheaply.
There are others that arrive carrying hospital bills, broken relationships, empty bank accounts and years of regret.
If someone has already paid the price, listening costs us almost nothing.
The idea is not limited to our homes or relationships. The world has learnt in the same way. Nations preserve the records of wars because they know that forgetting yesterday can make tomorrow dangerous.
Financial institutions study past crises. Scientists study failed experiments. Pilots investigate accidents so that another crew does not repeat the same error.
George Santayana’s famous warning speaks to the same idea: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Yet individuals often behave as though other people’s experiences do not count until they become our own.
We hear about someone losing money through a fraudulent investment and say, “I am smarter than that.”
We watch someone destroy a relationship through dishonesty and say, “My partner is different.”
We see somebody spend years trying to escape debt and tell ourselves, “I can handle it.”
Sometimes we can. Sometimes we cannot.
The problem is not confidence. The problem is refusing to learn.
The young man eventually folded the agreement and put it back into his bag.
“So you are not saying I shouldn’t do the business?”
“No.”
“You are saying I should check everything first?”
“Yes.”
“And if everything checks out?”
“Then you make your decision.”
He nodded.
His mother stood up and began clearing the cups from the table.
“You see?” she said. “I am not trying to live your life for you.”
He smiled.
“I know.”
“I only don’t want my mistake to become your inheritance.”
He looked at her and laughed.
“That one is going into my head.”
I smiled too.
That sentence, more than anything else she had said that afternoon, captured the lesson.
We inherit many things from the people before us. Names. Property. Culture. Traditions. Sometimes, without realising it, we also inherit their mistakes.
But we don’t have to repeat them. A person’s experience can become a warning sign for somebody else. A scar can become a signpost. A failed business can become a business lesson.
A broken relationship can teach another person what to watch for. A financial mistake can save someone else from making the same expensive decision.
We will still make our own mistakes. Nobody escapes life without them. There are things we will only understand after living through them, and there are decisions nobody else can make for us.
But wisdom is not measured by how many times we have fallen.
Sometimes wisdom is knowing enough to listen to somebody who has already fallen.
The young man eventually left with the agreement still unsigned.
As he walked towards the gate, his mother called after him.
“Don’t forget what I told you.”
He turned.
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
Then she added, “And send me the agreement before you sign anything.”
He laughed.
“Mummy!”
“What? You said experience is the best teacher. I’m only trying to make sure you don’t become too experienced.”
We laughed again.
I watched him walk away and thought about how many costly lessons could be avoided if we became a little less eager to prove that we knew everything.
Sometimes another person’s mistake is a gift wrapped in an unpleasant story.
The question is whether we are humble enough to unwrap it.
Personal Thoughts:
I have learnt that listening to someone who has made a mistake does not make me weak or dependent. It simply means I understand that my life does not have to be a laboratory where every lesson must be tested on me before I believe it.
One Thing Worth Remembering:
Experience is a great teacher, but it can be an expensive one. When someone has already paid the price for a lesson and is willing to tell us what it cost, wisdom may be choosing to learn without paying the same bill.
Let’s Talk:
Have you ever ignored someone’s warning because you wanted to experience something for yourself, only to discover later that the person was right?
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