Experience

Have you ever tried to avoid reading a big heavy book for a book report by getting someone else to summarize the book for you. Perhaps you used Cliffs Notes. Then you wrote up your report based on someone else's summary.

If you have, you probably did alright but not amazing with your report. But what if, after you handed in your report, the teacher called on you to answer some specific question and to back up your answer with how you think a certain character in the book would have felt in the circumstance. You would probably be floundering at that point, not sure what to say. After all if you had actually read the book you should be qualified to answer the question.

But, since you did not, you would not have the knowledge that would have been gained by the experience of actually reading it. You only have the limited knowledge based on the summary that you used. Due to the nature of summarizing, a great deal of the detailed specifics of what went on in the book would be completely unknown to you.

The same is true in nearly every area of life. People are constantly looking for the quick way or the shortcut to a thing. And the truth of the matter is, after you have gained the knowledge and experience of a thing it is easy to condense most of that information down to a few easy sentences or paragraphs.To other people who are just as learned in the topic you are discussing as you are, those few words will call up the entire experience and they can then comment on their thoughts and feelings on the subject.

People without that collection of knowledge and experience will only get the base meaning behind your words and will have no framework for which to apply them to. Often times your summary will make no sense to them at all for this reason.

Think for a moment of a mathematician. If you were to walk up to him and ask him to start explaining to you a certain differential equation, his answer would likely make no sense at all to you if you were not also a mathematician. The reason for this is because it is an advanced math. If you do not already know calculus, and a number of other things you would not have the knowledge to be able to do anything with his answer.

What about man's search for enlightenment? Lots of movies and books show the novice going up to a wise man or master of some sort and asking for the secrets to life and happiness. Invariably, the answer is always something that the unlearned person can not understand.

In a great many areas of life a person learns things slowly over time and at each step adds a bit more to their knowledge base. Eventually they are able to come to understandings and conclusions that simply were not possible from the start. Their paradigm changes over time to include more and more complex notions based on things learned much earlier. The person who completes this process is not the same person who started it.

There is no quick easy way. If you want to be successful at a thing you need to put in the time required to gain the knowledge and experience. You must surround yourself with the thing you want to know and look at it from new and different angles as you learn more and more about it.

Then, one day, people will come to you and ask you to summarize the subject that you are an expert at. And on that day, you can smile cryptically and give them an answer that is perfectly true but makes no sense to them.