Vachon Imagined

When you can teach something, you know it.

You have grappled with the mechanics, the mistakes, the frustrations, and the unfortunate outcomes long enough to find your way through them. Not perfectly, but consistently enough that you can guide others.

Years ago, I was asked to give a briefing at a convention of crime analysts and behavioralists. I was nervous.

At the time, I thought it was because I was afraid of public speaking.

Later, I realized it was something else.

I wasn’t prepared.

I had been thrown into the experience of explaining a mapping system that felt like a Goliath when I was still very much a David. The system was vast. I understood perhaps a quarter of what it could do, and standing in front of people who expected expertise was intimidating.

But I met the challenge.

More importantly, I stayed in my lane.

I did not venture into areas I didn’t fully understand. I spoke on what I knew and admitted what I didn’t. Looking back, that may have been the most valuable lesson the experience had to offer.

With time, I became what some might call an expert.

Even now, I know there is always more to learn.

There is always another layer to discover, another question to ask, another perspective to consider.

Youth often mistakes confidence for competence. We puff out our chests. We cling to affirmations. We mistake certainty for wisdom.

Experience has a way of softening those edges.

It teaches the rules of engagement.

Speak on what you know.

Ask questions about what you don’t.

Listen more than you lecture.

Remain teachable even when you are teaching.

Because the best teachers never stop being students.

And until you are willing to be both student and teacher, perhaps you are not yet ready to teach.

Continue to illuminate and be illuminated.

Continue to learn and be challenged.

Continue to be humbled by what you do not know.

So that when it is your turn to take the podium, you are not merely prepared by study.

You are prepared by season.

Seasoned by mistakes.

Seasoned by questions.

Seasoned by experience.

And seasonally tested by life itself.