Experience beats Everything Else.

I read a quote somewhere in the course of last week that kept me thinking for some time now. The quote said something to the effect that experience cannot be equated even to the reading of many books. Still within the same week as I studied my daily study guide, I read that wisdom is as a result of lots of experience with a case in hand of King David. That the Proverbs and Psalms he wrote were out of the experience he had as King, a father, a warrior, a herder and many other roles.

Let me digress and talk briefly about the experiences of David before I can get back on course for my few insights for today. David as a King knew how guilt consciousness can eat somebody up especially after ‘stealing’ somebody’s wife. Remember he took Bathsheba for himself as a wife after recommending that her husband be fronted in battle. That is what we call double tragedy. Somebody with such a grievous act, who got to understand what it means to almost lose grace and partake of the fury of a wrong doing, qualifies to offer consultancy to young men and women in various fixes of this life.

The same David killed a giant man in the name of Goliath with a stone and a sling. He faced a huge challenge from a bleak point of success yet he succeeded massively in killing this philistine giant. This is the point where David knew that success is not an individual thing. It takes extra hands and help to make it in life. We need others in our journey of success. When David keeps pointing at God for his help in his administration, he is acknowledging inefficiency as an individual to achieve all he did.

At the end of the day, experience gave David tons of wisdom which he passed down to his son Solomon. If he followed it to the letter is a different story for another day. From his mistakes too as well as experiences, Solomon had a lot to write to us. Some of those instances he found himself in have not changed to date. It thus holds for fact that experience surpasses even the reading of many stacks of books.

For instance when I left university, I was well equipped with a lot of book knowledge. When I tried to put into practice what I had learned shortly after graduating, I met a lot of roadblocks which needed experience as opposed to book knowledge alone. Fast forward, I am learning daily and realizing that I get more experience as I learn from doing as well as drinking from the well of those experienced than I am. In the process of doing, I am able to identify the void my book knowledge didn’t capture and figure it out. The figuring process is what we call growth and is what helps in wisdom development.

The dangers of theories that we sometimes learn in class is that they are sometimes so farfetched from what reality is. They are mostly idealized as opposed to being realistic. We could argue that they form the basis of invention and also promotes innovation yet we must agree that it is far more important to get the skill while learning and at the same time testing practically the theoretical hypotheses. There is every reason why employers are advertising jobs and insisting on experience of a certain number of years. Experience is critical for development at personal as well as enterprise level.

Back in the day, people learnt through the process of apprenticeship. Apprenticeship is the process of being instructed or rather a system of learning under the instruction of master in a certain craft or trade. The master often is an individual who has learnt a lot from the actual doing of the craft or trade and the apprentice gets the opportunity to learn one on one from the master while also participating in the practical aspects. In this form of learning, theoretical frameworks are at their minimal while practical takes precedence.

There is a big difference between the guy who theorizes the game and the one who actually plays. At some point, if the two are put together and asked to play, experience from the guy who has been in the field for almost all their life will beat the virtual player who has the game in mind only.

It doesn’t mean there are no mistakes while participating in the doing, nay. In fact it is from the mistakes and failures that experience comes in and also the development of wisdom. Finally, when all is said and done, the experience takes precedence because room for mistakes is reduced to a bare minimum. Experience means that you don’t start at zero, you start at somewhere. It also means that innovation is easier to be instigated because pointing out loopholes is easier with the fact that the individual as some idea of the whole thing.

Experience means taking lesser times to figure out things. In such cases, there is a huge time and resource saving because we can easily know what has already been tried and dint work instead of repeating the same from zero and in the process resources going to waste. Experience means wisdom which translates to a rich source of mind power to help steer us forward.

Well, we need all the book knowledge as well as the papers we can for our crafts, but then we need to understand that not even those can beat what experience is able to do. Experience often plays at its own league. It is what we need to develop and gain above everything.

End.