Experiences often make life fulfilling.
People around us are well qualified, but many of them are not truly experienced. What is the gap, and how can it be filled? This question is a regular one that comes to mind and keeps me engaged.
Before discerning what an experience is, just see what Aldous Huxley has said:
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
Month ends, year goes to next, we shift from student to start-up, and we face many things in between, but what we lean on from moment to moment are experiences, otherwise not more than memories to exchange in family and beyond.
Even age is not regarded as enough for a man to have acquired experience. Because age is the total number of days we live, experience is the sum of what one learns while going through situations in one’s own life.
If a person has been doing the same job for ten years, his or her experience is one year. The reasons are that there is no additional exposure, no change in routine assignments, the place remains unchanged, the same customers exist, and so on.
In real-life situations, as a student, I have seen that while entering school, I got feedback from different sources about teachers, sports, the library, and the overall arrangement, and I was promoted from one class to a higher class with different experiences. The feedback was quite opposite on many occasions. It confirms that perceptions vary from person to person.
Likewise, while in college, a chemistry teacher pointed out the wrong placement of the caps of bottles with acid while in a practical session, and this experience of caution I have leveraged in other walks of my life too, with great benefits. That experience lasted a few minutes, but the lesson lasted a lifetime.
Such things happen to all of us, but many of us are habitual about ignoring those valuable moments.
We all agree that a lecture on swimming is of little help until we enter the water and see how we saved ourselves from drowning in the first place. It is not only an experience, but a real one. We get lasting experience only when there are errors and even a blunder.
Experience can be pleasant or unpleasant; both are powerful and valuable.
Once knowledge is applied and the process is closely monitored, we get practical insights, and in common terms, it is an experience.
We can’t learn everything from our own mistakes. The stretches of experience are infinite, while we live for finite days. This requires us to be aware of what is going on outside and to draw lessons from it in order to solve our own problems.
We must not be driven by hearsay or input in informal meetings. We must cross-check to know the realities. Digging into the matter has sometimes resulted in changes to the complete story.
Being talented keeps us limited until we apply it to dealing with the highs and lows of our own lives. Talent, coupled with skill, makes a life fulfilling.
There is no experience in criticising others and making the whole world responsible for our deep backwardness. It is time to pass. In other words, it is a waste of time.
We gain rich experience when we handle quite unlikely situations in our lives. We must be thankful for hard times where meaningful experiences were hidden.
When we are reluctant to admit our faults, we deny reality and lose an opportunity for some sort of valid experience.
Sometimes it is the mistakes that turn out to be the best parts of life, ,says Carrie Ryan.
Thus, if mistakes occur, we must not be hard on ourselves. Rather, these are the moments to learn lessons and go forward.
Listening to the views of others is always a burden for people with weak minds. Listening is an important component of enriching our experience. Practice listening, even if we are most likely to be disappointed. Possibly, this is the moment when we will be able to read the minds of our opponents.
Further, no single experience is okay for all situations. With fast-changing landscapes, the experiences of youth have been found to be more valid than what elders have tried to impose. Any experience needs to be tested for fitness in an emerging scenario, keeping at least the next ten years in mind.
The takeaway is that experience matters more in our lives than being knowledgeable and a hard worker.
