We can be experts in swimming techniques, teach, learn about different styles (butterfly, ramp, back or chest) or even advise those who need it, inflate our own ego while illustrating those who know little about it or who have misconceptions about it. However, our knowledge is not complete. Without the voice of experience, what we say and affirm does not have the same value.
Every day we come across people who give us many tips that do not come from their own direct experience (or who only come from it), however, they are considered experts because they have read, trained or listened to. a respectable person.
The voice of experience is very valuable because it provides us with real learning, lived in the first person.
We are not aware that experience involves much, in large part because it allows empathy, with it one realizes that any theory has a limit in terms of its accuracy (reality in this sense is always much richer than the model). personally, in a real and true way, it is what brings us much of our knowledge and, above all, what records it in our memory.
Why is it so difficult to decide to throw yourself into the water without a doubt, why do we prefer to speak without having experienced for ourselves what we transmit ?, fear and insecurity could be two answers to a single feeling. On the other hand, we will have adopted in some way, anticipating what will happen since we have not experienced it. They are the fears that survive in our heads thanks to our lack of experience.
We have been educated in the game of judging and blaming others, while we think we are wise and have absolute truth; they have taught us that our words are much more important than our experiences; however, many of them are worthless precisely because we do not immerse ourselves in water, because we do not touch reality.
How can we say we know something to the last consequences if we can’t experience it?You can know everything about Picasso’s Guernica, for example. You can know by heart the life of the author and the context of his work. But were you there, when this bombing happened, now turned into a work of art, can you really imagine what it was like for the people who lost their loved ones?
“You don’t know what it’s like to sleep in a hospital for two months holding your hand because the doctors saw in your eyes that the end of visiting hours wasn’t for you. You don’t know what it means to lose someone because you’ll only know when you love someone but yourself.
-Robin Williams (Indomitable Genius) –
In the comfort of a sofa, with a book in hand, for a moment we think we know everything, when we are actually far from being able to understand the essence of that moment, feelings and feeling emotions are lacking. In addition to all the chaos, fear and pain that many people have witnessed, the voice of experience is far more enriching and real than anything that has lived in its own flesh what it says.
We risk criticizing and judging those people we don’t know anything about or know very little about, sometimes our words hurt more than we think, because we talk unknowingly, we don’t think about what they went through, because we weren’t in their place. We are not aware of what we think we know about them, which may be much less than we think.
To internalize all this and reflect more on the importance of the voice of experience, we would like to share with you this excerpt from the film “Indomitable Genius”. Robin Williams’ speech in Indomitable Genius certainly does something in you to move.
If you think about it, you will surely remember to be in a situation similar to that of the young man in the film, this fragment allows us to realize how little we know about others and, in general, what surrounds us, but above all, it helps us realize that the information we have, most of the time, is incomplete or does not have the vivacity to have lived it.
Grandparents are a clear example of what the voice of experience is
Perhaps we ourselves have a difficult or important experience that we are trying to convey to others, in this sense, despite the attempt to share it, others will never be able to fully understand it, as they could not experience what we might experience. However, the voice of experience, ours, is important to those who listen to us.
We can all learn from the experiences of others. They enrich us, they give us knowledge that we don’t have, they help us open our minds. To do this, we must be prepared to listen without judgment, but above all, we must venture to try everything we can on our own, because it will bring us the greatest wealth.