It a common desire in man, to be successful, but success comes through experience; without experience there is no success. The type of experience you will have on your journey to success will be in line with what you are pursuing. For instance, when a person wishes to be a doctor, his experiences will include a 5-7 years study in medicine and surgery, housemanship and so forth. His experience will be different from a mechanical engineer, who spends 4-5 years studying engineering, and is exposed to designs and manufacturing of machines. If these experiences are separated from their lives, these two persons will not be competent, not to talk of being certified to practice.
Now, experiences are most times not pleasant. For this reason, although people still pursue success in a field, they try to cut corners or try to steer themselves away from experience. For instance, I have heart lot of people declare they are going to be successful, they even believe, dress like it and confess it, but instead of building themselves through experience in that field, they keep looking for ways to cut corners.
This is a common occurrence, and unfortunately, social media hasn't helped matters. Some persons have been made to believe success can come by skipping experience, because of some incomplete success stories they heard online. Some even use words like grace, miracles, and statements like "what will be, will be" as an assurance that even if they do not go after experience, their success will still come to them.
Life in general follows a pattern. There are processes that must be fulfilled for a result to be achieved. For instance, there are requirements that must be fulfilled for a person to be legally married. The process of fulfilling these requirements births Experience. We can say, "Experience is in the process; it is unavoidable". .
On the other hand, there are some persons who have experienced things but they have failed to grow or be taught by them. You find these set of people making the same mistake over an over again. Some surprisingly brag about it. Although we are free to talk about our experiences, I believe it's main purpose is to teach. We are meant to analyze the experiences we have had; check for the things we did right and others we did wrong, so that if we find ourself in a similar situation in the future, we will know the right way to handle it.
In summary, life is full of experiences. Everyday, with each interactions we make with things and people, we experience new things. Some times, these experiences are good, while other times, they are unpleasant. Bad experiences can be unavoidable sometimes, but I believe that if we can pick ourselves up, look around and see what made us fail, I believe we will come out of it wiser.
Lest not forget, an experience must not be personal before we can learn from it. The quote I made earlier states "Experience is the best teacher". It did not say, "my experience" or "your experience". This implies that we could learn from our experience as well as other people's experiences. Nonetheless, for one to really make the best out of an experience, he/she must first be willing to learn.
Read, Ponder, Love.
