Sunday, October 9, 2011

Experience

How is it that we, the collective "we," think we have wisdom to share? We reach a milestone birthday or a milestone event and we seem to decide that simple chronological marker imparts wisdom. Why is that?

It's my position that wisdom does not accompany time nor experience. Wisdom accompanies the proper interpretation of experience. And even then the interpretation must be made in the proper context of life experience. In the end, it's quite subjective and not likely to be reproducible in the real world. So we all live our lives, using an unreliable model as our guide, a model that is transformed by experience and circumstance.

We all live a lie of one kind or another.

And that, my friend, makes me cry. And I can't stop.

4 comments:

Taradharma said...

the weight of any lie can be burdensome. sometimes we think a little lie is just a little lie, but we know better. it does make one cry.

Have I recommended, probably have, Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart? Great to read when life is changing rapidly.

Springer Kneeblood said...

You have recommended it, Tara, and I have it in front of me. The first chapter, "Intimacy with Fear," begins thusly: "Embarking on the spiritual journey is like getting into a very small boat and setting out on the ocean to search for unknown lands."

I don't know. Are they lies, or are they misinterpretations? Or something altogether different? I'm in a mood that doesn't come along very often, and that's a good thing, I think.

YourFireAnt said...

And just what is the "proper interpretation of experience" ?

Springer Kneeblood said...

The proper interpretation of experience is as hard to define as is wisdom. I know it when I see it, but I can't quite define it. That applied to wisdom and to the proper interpretation of experience that leads to...or perhaps defines...wisdom.