{"id":17,"date":"2008-09-21T03:11:35","date_gmt":"2008-09-21T10:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/21\/are-you-experienced\/"},"modified":"2012-02-25T18:25:46","modified_gmt":"2012-02-26T01:25:46","slug":"are-you-experienced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/21\/are-you-experienced\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Experienced?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The importance of experience came up in the comments of a myspace<\/a> post of mine and I made a quick statement talking about it. While it’s accurate in its representation of my opinion, I had also written the following to serve as an example. I decided to cut it, because it wasn’t needed to make my point. Still, I felt like expanding on it and putting it up somewhere because it’s a good story about how your character can shape your experience more than your experience can shape your character, so here it is.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few years ago, I had a friend who told me and my inner circle of friends that back when he “used to be like” us, young, naive and full of hope, he did charity work for the poor once. Not a single poor person so much as thanked him, so he never did charity work again. He was attempting to prove that the world is a cynical place and that his “it’s every man for himself” attitude was justified. What he was incapable of seeing was that he was a cynic and that his experience didn’t shape him: he shaped it.<\/p>\n

The proof of this lies in his intent. He didn’t show up on that fateful day just to help those less fortunate than him. If he had, he would have ended the day, noted that he had done what he set out to do and felt accomplished and satisfied. Instead, he walked in looking for something; a pat on the back, a congratulations, a reward or maybe, an excuse. Charity wasn’t the priority, thus the act became selfish. Had one of the people he helped thanked him, do you believe it would have changed everything and he would have been a giving soul from that point on? Probably not. His story likely would have changed to end with “and only one, ONE person thanked me!” If all it took to destroy his faith in mankind was a handful of silent strangers, then that faith wasn’t really there to begin with.<\/p>\n

In the old-time movies, the hero saves the day and usually refuses a reward before riding off into the sunset. Cynics (who often hide behind the term “realist”) will cry that this isn’t the way of the world and that nobody really acts like that, but I see it everyday from people. Most of the time, it is between people who have a strong connection to one another, like friends or family, but there are those in the world who would just as easily help a complete stranger as they would those they love. Granted, it is rare to find someone who will help a stranger as much as they would a loved one, but they always seem willing to help at least a little without expecting anything back.<\/p>\n

If pressed, I could name off a dozen people who are like this. They would have had the same experience and walked away perfectly fine because they would go into the situation not needing a reward. They’d just do it because it is the right thing to do. These people, not surprisingly, always end up being my best friends, because they inspire me.<\/p>\n

So in the end, the only thing he accomplished in telling us this was to illustrate that he already had a pretty shoddy view of the world back when he was “just like us” and that this incident had become the proof he needed to stop trying to be something better. And “I would be a totally cool guy, but the world won’t let me. Wah!” turns out to not be a deep, touching example of how an event changed you, but the rant of a crybaby with victim syndrome who took an event and made it his excuse.<\/p>\n

There are events in your life that shape you. But once a person reaches the age where they are fully self-aware and coming up with their own opinions, the tables start to turn and the person they are starts shaping their experiences to fit their worldview. Once someone recognizes that though, a funny thing occurs: they can see that their experiences are just that, experiences. And from that point on, the person they are can no longer be blamed on the world, but only themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The importance of experience came up in the comments of a myspace post of mine and I made a quick statement talking about it. While it’s accurate in its representation of my opinion, I had also written the following to serve as an example. I decided to cut it, because it wasn’t needed to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,10,11,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":527,"href":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aberrantpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}