Steem4nigeria Accelerator Contest Week 139: Is Experience The Best Teacher?

Life in itself is a great teacher; we learn every day from everything going on around us. But to say that experience is the best teacher would be quite ambiguous. I would usually prefer to sit on the fence on discussions of this nature, but I must speak since the contest prompts me to state my opinion. For me, our experiences are part of our life; they are our mistakes, our successes, our relationships, our growth, our delays, and, most importantly, our lessons. But then, to say that experience is the best teacher goes much deeper than it seems.

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• MY UNDERSTANDING OF EXPERIENCE

For me, it all depends on how we perceive experience. Our entire life, in my opinion, is a series of experiences, and it is really impossible to consider any activity in our life as not being an experience. If we are to understand life from this point of view, it then implies that there is nothing else aside from experience; all that there is becomes experience. If this is to become the acceptable definition of experience, then I agree; experience is not just the best teacher, it is the only teacher. In fact, it is our life.

If my definition of experience becomes acceptable, it implies that "being told" is also an experience of some sort; and so, we do not really have to live it to experience it. Of course, we learn from what we are told, and sometimes, we come to know from what we are told. Though we have not lived it, we know it.

• LIVED EXPERIENCE IS NOT ALWAYS THE BEST TEACHER

Experience, in the sense of living life, is not always the best teacher. It would be unreasonable to outrightly say that it is not the best teacher, but then, it is simply not always the best teacher. It is, in most cases, the teacher that eventually convinces its victim that the truth they already know is more brutal than they thought. In such a case, it becomes the final teacher of students who refused to practice what they had learned simply because they wanted to put themselves in the shoes of an ignorant person. It was most likely never the best teacher; it was only the final teacher.

Lived experience, in the sense that it improves already acquired knowledge (which must have been gotten through told experience or theoretical knowledge), could as well be a great teacher, but certainly not the best teacher. If experience is considered the best teacher in this sense, one may simply be concluding that the latter teacher is the best simply because the former teacher taught first. I am of the opinion that both theoretical knowledge and knowledge acquired through practice are of equal value. In fact, one should not do without the other.

• LEARNING FROM MISTAKES AND LEARNING FROM A MENTOR OR BOOK (TOLD EXPERIENCE)

For one to learn from their mistakes, it would most likely imply that they had no prior knowledge of whatever it is they made a mistake on. If that is the case, then they are certainly at a great disadvantage. Acquiring authentic knowledge is better and faster if one has first been told (or theoretically taught). To not first acquire theoretical knowledge before embarking on lived experience would definitely bring about errors or mistakes, ones that could have been avoided if one had first been told how to actually practice or live. And so, it is absolutely slower to acquire knowledge through lived experience than to first acquire it through a book or mentor before embarking on lived experience.

But then, I refuse to consider one who had prior told or practical knowledge, yet decided to err by intentionally going against that prior knowledge, as one who has made a mistake. This is simply based on the fact that mistakes should not, in any way, be intended. If a mistake is intended, then it is absolutely not a mistake, except when the one who acted sincerely considered their former knowledge to be false.

• LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE AND LEARNING FROM AN EXPERIENCED PERSON

None is more important than the other. If one is able to understand this, then they have done a lot of balancing already. It is ideal that one does not embark on the latter without first passing through the former. In other words, it is most appropriate that we first acquire theoretical knowledge before practical knowledge. One who fails to first acquire theoretical knowledge about that which they are yet to practically experience will most likely encounter errors and delays in experience. Though one can do without the other, it is never ideal that one embark on the latter without first passing through the former.

• CONCLUSION

Every happening in life has something to teach us. But most importantly, they are what form our experiences. Every one of them—the lectures from people who have lived the life we anticipate, the lessons we learn from watching others live that life, and the act of living the life ourselves—none is left out. And so, every one of them is as important as the other. Lived experience is for me, just a segment of our experiences, and it should not in any way be considered the best of all. Every one of them has something to teach, something important, and none teaches better than the other. The importance of theoretical experience (which is the told experience) is made manifest when someone fails to acquire it before experiencing the practical aspect of that which they failed to acquire theoretically; it is eventually made manifest in their errors. Yet, nothing guarantees that one who was not told before experiencing will learn better than one who was told before experiencing; it is, in fact, the other way round.