| Many individuals over the years have debated on the purpose of life, and everything that comes with being human, I attended a college where we have 24 credit hours dedicated to that very subject.
However, I will not attempt to cover what it means to be human, rather I will be speaking on one of the reasons for life, particularly human life. The title of this rambling is Experience. I believe one of the purposes of our existence is to gain experience in Life itself. Experience goes beyond what many people equate with work. While one does gain experience in work, that is just a small portion and time in our lives. We experience Life from birth to death. With every new experience, we gain an understanding of who we are in relation to others and it determines how we relate to them as well. Experience determines how one will react to a stimulus. Scientists have studied how animals react after conditioned to certain stimuli. However, what is the conditioning, but exposing the animal to something that will produce either a positive or negative reaction. This is an experience for the animal. The animal will experience either positive or negative reinforcement for the decision it makes. So like wise, humans, being in essence an animal with reasoning, will have either a positive or a negative reinforcement for every experience he or she has in life. These experiences, both good and bad, will affect our lives until we die. They determine how we interact with Life itself. If, for example, a child has a traumatic experience with fire, or we should say a negative experience, the adult may react toward fire negatively perhaps even to the point where the individual suffers from pyrophobia. Similarly, a positive experience with fire may allow the adult to have a normal view of fire, or a positive view of fire. Life uses experience to instruct and condition us to respond to stimuli both positively and negatively. Life is a hard schoolmaster, however Life is not prejudiced against any one individual. It is up to the individual to deal with both the negative and positive experiences. To quote an 80s song “Scars are souvenirs you never loose, the past is never far.” We cannot change what has happened in our past. Nevertheless, we can change how we react to the experiences. If a person reacts negatively to every new experience or continues to let a past negative experience influence his or her life, he or she will never truly experience life. It is only when we take the negative experiences, learn from them and turn them into a positive experience that we will be able to face Life and not turn away from it. Only when we embrace Life, including the hardships, do we know what it is to be truly human. |
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