<div class="text-justify">

I went into the office today and ended up having lunch with a colleague at a sushi restaurant close by. Normally, I just go to the restaurant in the building out of convenience, but I would prefer to take advantage of the many other options. This will be another change to my daily office life, and I will encourage others to come with me - because getting out of the office changes the conversation and it generally becomes a bit more personal. Rather than "being in the office with a colleague", it becomes, *having a meal with a friend.*

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/23tmDgFJrdE8y8QbNesT5AcSovUGgNoXdktv6RCZRwHKgYPNsmrYiMcAqQkY1Hq2uVnyZ.png)

Today, we were discussing the session I mentioned last week, where one of the keynote speakers was talking about resilience, and a lot of it didn't connect with the audience. In my mind, it is because in order to have an understanding of what was being said at a high level (keynote speeches don't go deep), a person would need to have background information, and part of that would likely need to be some experience with what is being discussed.

My friend today understood this, but also questioned my position about the way people feel, because I used love as an example, where teens can feel love, but it isn't necessarily the same kind of love that a forty year old will experience, because of *experience.* He took this to mean that I was comparing the feeling of two people, as if I was assuming that a teen can't feel the same depth as an adult. This is not the case, and what I was trying to capture is through the perspective of my own self, my own depth of feeling, and the difference between my own teen love, and my love as a husband and father today, with three decades of experience between me then, and me now.

I think a good way to perhaps illustrate the difference is through an example of a song heard as a teen and how the meaning of the song can change through experience. The same words, the same music, but the song itself can have a completely different impact on us later in life, depending on our experience. 

For instance, "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton was released in 1992 when I was 13, and I really liked the song. I could feel it. When I found out some time later that it was about the loss of his son who died at the age of four from a n accidental fall, I felt more of the pain in it, and liked it more. The additional information enriched my experience of the song, changing the meaning of it and adding depth. However, as my own experience has grown, so too has the depth of my feeling and thoughts around that song, especially since I myself became a father. Every time I hear it, it reminds me of my daughter and the few times we have thought we might lose her in her young life. 

> Can that feeling be learned from a book? 

While younger people think older people are unqualified to judge current behavior and predict future feelings because culture has changed, the fact is that *people really haven't changed* all that much at the end of the day. Yet, like all younger generations, they think that their feelings are valid, which they are, but they *probably* don't realize that while their feelings are real, they aren't as deep or as complex as they will be later in their life, once they have more experience under their belt. 

Life is like that development of meaning in the song, where parts of it that were important, drop away and get replaced by parts that are made more important. It is a maturing of experience, though the gathering of experience itself. It is why we look back and realize that school wasn't so bad, nor was it so hard, and the problems we had in our twenties, were not as grand as we thought they were at the time. 

When it comes to resilience, this also factors in, because as we age, we tend to have more responsibilities, more obligations, more complexity and therefore, have to make more compromise. We don't have the space to dwell on circumstances, or wallow in self pity, we just have to sometimes suck it up, and get on with it, doing what is necessary, whether we like it or not.

It isn't about age, it is about experience, but a lot of people believe they are experienced, even though they haven't fully accounted for the depth of what they have faced, and what they *could face* in the future. It is only in the rearview mirror of reflection, that we realize what seemed so tough, was comparatively a walk in the park. And as such, when we get to that point today, it is hard to not look at people younger who are complaining about the difficulties in their lives and think, *if only they knew what was to come.* 

>I wish I had known.

But if someone had told me all those years ago, I probably wouldn't have listened either. But, just like the changing meaning of songs with experience, if I had listened differently, perhaps I would have deepened my experience more broadly.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]


</div>