Empower Wisdom; Be Young at Heart

According to Webster’s dictionary, experience is “practical contact with and observation of facts or events.”

I don’t like that definition. It’s too sterile for me.

Each time I think the word “experience” I feel an ephemeral warmth and peace, because to me the word is positive. It is spiritual. It is life-altering. It is caught in the sepia-tinged photographs of my memory.

Experience is more than a noun to me. It is so close to a state of mind and a being as it enables me to be.

Experience conjures some of the best moments of my life — my mother picking me up early from elementary school to get ice cream and visit the library, reading me stories, rocking me back to sleep after I had a bad dream; weekends spent with my great-grandmother, Lorene — reading articles from Reader’s Digest, playing scrabble, listening to classical music from her collection of record albums, my head in her lap because the preacher held no interest for a twelve-year-old; the bond and mentorship I shared with my English teachers and church youth leader — holding Ms. Judy in my arms when her father died, being told by Mr. Clark that boys would like me someday, listening to Brother Larry tell biblical stories about men and women who defied the conventions of mankind in order to be right; my time in the United States Marine Corps — fellow Marines who exemplified strength and leadership, overcoming obstacles and absorbing irreplaceable life lessons, validation from my mentors that it is within my power to empower others, feeling the importance of serving a cause greater than myself.

Experience conjures up some of the worst moments of my life — and I’ll leave this passage short; the disappointment of losing, the bitterness of suffering, the fatigue of trying. All my experiences, good and bad, have fostered the sweetness of succeeding. Some of my experiences mock me. Some of them cheer me. All of them lift me, because I choose to be lifted.

Invaluable experience has molded me into the person I am, even more the person I strive every day to become. Experiences, good and bad, are blessings. Our experiences are our sources of strength. These sources are the people we meet, the places we’ve been, and the observations we have made. Experience is touching a life and allowing one’s self to be touched by life. I wouldn’t trade any of my experiences and I would alter only one.

Being aware of each experience as it occurs and learning from it is to live. This is my challenge. It is my challenge to you, dear reader and fellow friend, in the journey to achieve personal success.

Don’t be passive in your experiences, but instead choose to experience. Share with others your experiences, because they are gifts to be given.

In particular, seek wisdom from those who have walked before you. I enjoy so much wealth through the experiences of my elders as they have regaled me with their personal quests. I find the Wisdom of Solomon in their eyes.

Here I acknowledge what is bittersweet and I sigh. I find the one regretful caveat related to wisdom is age. I say this because with age comes the inevitability of death. Do not misunderstand; I do not find death repellent. Death to me is another experience, an unknown variable. It offers the possibility of a higher form of wisdom and a unique existence. For me, the regrettable association to death is the loss of wisdom, knowledge, and experience from one generation to another.

It is regrettable that so little history is retained through orations, recorded data, and the passing of experience from one generation to the next. I could spend a lifetime attempting to understand all that a single person ‘is’ and I promise you I would fail. Here I lament, because so much of our elders’ experiences pass away unappreciated.

Sometimes I am blessed with the presence of one who is older than me and thankfully I am still with the willingness to learn. I will myself to absorb their energy. I bask in ‘his’ greatness or hold in awe the idea that ‘she’ is ignorant of her worth. At times, I want to embrace tight these people as if to suspend time, defy it, and defy death. I want to say, “Don’t go. I have so much to learn. How can your life be spent when you have so much to teach?” But I remain silent and feel the bittersweet rhythm of that which is inevitable.

I hope at my life’s end I will have something to give. In spite of my faults, I hope at my life’s end I will have earned the right to be a source of positive experience for others to follow. I still have so much to learn. I have yet to fully harness my potential. I am weak in my convictions and I stagger if I do not fall. But I have triumphed in this life, because I persevere, and I appreciate each life I meet.

In closing, a poem for you:

Upon this earth, our birth;

Through dark and light we pace.

Travailing through the age until we find our place;

Triumphant as the weight of war is lifted from the soul,

Welcomed by the echoes of those who’ve gone before;

Each unique landscape made indelible by life’s lesson.

Experience, Wisdom, and Knowledge, all boast a quiet confession.

At last, the words are uttered, an awe-inspiring lore,

But then the breath expires, and learn we can no more.

— Heather Blackwell

“I wish you Zen, so you may enjoy Vigor.”