Experience

Experience.

It's how most of us, most of the time, gain our knowledge of and perspective on the world. Of course, I've always "known" this, having been taught from childhood that we were sent to this earth by our Heavenly Father to gain experience and learn from it; but it hasn't been until recently that I've actually started to know it. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it has to do with spending so much time watching B learn. Maybe it's because of the many conversations I had with B's mom about life and the things that happens to us in it. Whatever the reason, experience and its effects on us as a people and as a race has been on my mind a lot lately.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that our experience is what defines us as who we are. I don't think that we are merely the summation of the various experiences we've had in life. To think that way would be simplistic. But I do think that our experiences make up a large part of how we view the world, and how we view the world makes a big difference in how we react to the world. So many people take no thought for things that happen outside their realm of experience.