As each man’s experience of the world differs, each man should experience as much of the world as he possibly can, in order to balance his thoughts, develop empathy and even to set future goals. How can we achieve when we do not know what we need to improve on? How much do we know about ourselves if we’ve never been in a fight, asks Tyler Durden, this can be turned into how well do you know yourself when you are never really challenged? Science can teach us a lot, but how can we really ‘feel’ this, and to feel is to know. No?
A long time ago now, 1996 or 97 maybe, I learned this word empirical, to rely on observation and experience. The Sistine Chapel quote from Good Will Hunting comes to mind also. I feel like a bit of a twat sometimes saying ‘I’ve been there’, or ‘I’ve done that’ or ‘I used to do that’ in normal conversation, why should I? It’s all true. Why would anyone not want to say that? Just because my experiences have changed now to caravan parks and Disneyland doesn’t make it any less worthwhile, or my previous ones from being obsolete. I’ve still been to China. And I know what the Sistine Chapel smells like. And I know how Kazakhstan feels, which is more than a thousand books can teach. But in saying that, I fucking love books and often dream of huge book shops and labyrinth libraries.