at every point in life, there will be someone or the other trying to belittle your worth or your existence. no matter who you are, you will have this experience. there are different cliques of people in every society, each one judging you, thereby giving you acceptance into their group or even refuting your existence. these are the times that try us most as people. it proves to us who we are, irrespective of whether the world can see it.
often, your average wise-ass will come up to you in a situation of crisis, offering advice on the grounds that they have experience. psychology tells us that experiences are subjective, and there is a whole school of rationale that will substantiate this claim. common sense alone tells us that we each experience every situation, thought, opinion and behavior separately. and yet we blindly believe strangers apparent wisdom of our situation.
make one thing so clear in the mind that it is etched their for eternity - experience comes with circumstance, not age. definitely not mindlessness. and it is up to each of us to be strong enough to refute any claim made by others on the contrary. i'll cite a very simple example - when i was 16, i was quite naive, i admit. i am an only child to my parents, and therefore, terribly pampered. my school was near home and i got dropped and picked up from everywhere. therefore i did not ever venture out of my comfort zone. when i started Pre-university college, i had friends from all parts of the city. they spoke of places that i thought were miles away. i come from a different world than the friends i had made.
that fact always kept me from fitting in with them, for, on some level, the were alike and i was the outcast. anyways, the point - one day, one of my friends said to me, " you are such a mamma's girl arn't you? you always do things with her. you are so protected, never ventured out." in gist, this is what i got from her. it hurt me, of course it did. i had prided myself on being independent.
but then, after wallowing for awhile in self-pity, i realised, what is experience? just because they know two places more than me? that they can venture to farther places than me? but then, who is it that they come to when they have problems that need sorting out? who is their walking-talking encyclopedia on food? who is it that sets things right for them? and the only word that came to mind then was 'ME'.
So maybe we dont have exposure in some relations. but each of us is a sea of knowledge regarding something or the other, and that, no one can take from us. we each have our strengths and weaknesses which make us who we are. it is that also which should help us get to where we want to be and forget all that we wish to bury into the dark abyss of the unconscious.
