Not everything that is worthwhile to know in life can be taught. You can learn a great deal from teachers and books, but there are limits to what you can learn from them.
In a certain sense, the most worthwhile things you learn in life are from your reactions to direct experiences, like learning from your mistakes, and from your self-reflections about your feelings and your interpretations about the consequences of your actions.
The most worthwhile and meaningful things in life are always, by their nature, grounded in personal experience and reflections tied to those experiences, and so they can never be fully understood or appreciated simply by taking the word of someone else.
Getting Personal
What is something in life that you have learned that could never have been satisfactorily taught to you by a teacher or a book? Why could you never have learned this from a teacher or book?
“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” (Mark Twain)
“But it’s a journey and the sad thing is you only learn from experience, so as much as someone can tell you things, you have to go there and make your own mistakes in order to learn.” (Emma Watson)
“You don’t take a class; you’re thrown into motherhood and learn from experience.” (Jennie Finch)
….Top of post image, (Cat by the Tail), from dreamstime.com
