I understand. I read a book about it.
It’s been a lot harder to find new experiences lately, what with a global pandemic and all. Granted, maybe that’s just an excuse. But it has led me to think: What’s the alternative to firsthand experience?
If we’re stuck inside, living in a loop of sleep and WFH, how are we able to make the most of our limited time?
There are movies, TV series, YouTube videos, live streams, podcasts, articles, tweets, to name only a few time sinks. Now more than ever it feels like there is an infinite variety to the content we can consume.
But what if our want is to discover new experiences, to better understand this world and the people within it? And what if we need to do that without leaving the house?
All this content is the result of the experiences of others. Whatever the format is, it’s the experiences of a stranger, refined and packaged up into something that we’re able to learn from. Then all these pieces amount to potential secondhand experiences.
Some argue that this is even better than firsthand experience.
“Reading is far superior to experience because when you read you can read a master writer’s insights into the world that would take you forever…”
There’s a lot of truth to this. But can we go as far as to say secondhand experience is better?
There is at least one advantage to secondhand experience: Efficiency.
To have something interesting to say takes a lot more experience and thought and time than many might give it credit for. A well-refined piece can distill decades of experience and thought into a book you could read over a weekend.
There’s a reason why we don’t have children discover all of science from first principles by themselves. Teaching allows us to condense thousands of years of human progress into a semester. This stands true for the human experience as well.
Not to mention there are many experiences that, while they may be familiar or feel timeless, we simply cannot have anymore. The world changes, historical fiction, or interviews from decades past allow us to tap into something we couldn’t otherwise in our lives.
A good book, that has stood the test of time, has done so because it touches on something that very few people had before or since. Reading, and reflecting on a good book allows us to examine the unique perspective of someone, to tap into their life and their experiences.
A good narrative doesn’t only tell us a story, it changes the way we perceive and interact with the world. A good story changes us.
And it does so in a fraction of the time it may have otherwise taken.
But not all content is created equal.
While every five-minute video on YouTube will take exactly five minutes to watch, some of those videos distill a decade of thought, others contain no more than those five minutes.
This is true of any medium. Podcasts, blog articles, books.
All media can be judged on how it makes us feel, whether we enjoyed it or not. All media can also be judged on the depth it reveals to us.
And just as all content is not created equally, all ways of consuming it are not equal as well.
The shallowest content consumed deeply can lead to more understanding than the deepest content consumed shallowly.
All that we perceive, whether firsthand or secondhand, has an impact on the heuristics with which we live our lives. When we consume content thoughtlessly, and unquestioningly it still has this impact, but we have no idea what has changed in us.
With reflection on an experience we’re able to achieve two things:
- Find greater depth.
- Understand how it has affected us.
With deep reflection, even the shallowest content can spark a line of thinking that changes us. And only through reflection will we be able to describe in concrete terms what impact the experience had.
With all this in mind there are a few key takeaways:
- Be intentional with the content we choose to consume.
- Be present, reflective, and questioning while we consume it.
And finally, there is one last thing to ask about these secondhand experiences: Are they always better than firsthand experience?
I believe that while secondhand experience has its place there is something that will always be missing in it: You.
When you read a book you may be able to layer your interpretation over top of the story, but that very story will always have someone else’s perspective at its core. What you’re able to build will be built on the foundations of someone else’s reasoning. It’ll be an abstraction on an abstraction.
Perhaps the only way to find a thought that is truly your own is to have nothing between the world and yourself, for at least a moment, that you can later reflect on.
So, go read a good book. But don’t forget that with the life you’re living, you’re essentially writing one.
2021-09-26