Life Lessons Come Full Cycle

Fixing washers and dryers is not for the weak of heart. Scratching my head with a small black 4/16" bolt remover, I try to figure out how to change a heating element. Then my grandfather asks me to hand him his screwdriver: an ancient flat-head with dirt driven deep into the cracks of its yellow-brown handle. He uses it for everything besides unscrewing a screw. He has a different screwdriver for that. I’ve been working for my grandpa this summer fixing washers and dryers, lifting heavy machines, and breaking my back doing it. But despite the labor, he didn’t pay me for the first day I worked. “The knowledge and experience will reap its own rewards,” he told me. It started to sink in when I was fixing a dryer for my girlfriend’s father, and moreso when I sold my first machine. I took the instruction of my grandfather and applied it on my own. And one day, I’ll teach my own children. That’s what knowledge does. It’s taught to the young through the lessons of their elders. Then the young grow to teach their own youth. Knowledge always comes full cycle.