Experience Is A Problem

I’m in Chicago attending the NCLR (National Conference of Law Reviews). The purpose of the conference is to bring outgoing editors together with incoming editors in an attempt to provide some type of orientation. The four-day conference is a series of panel discussions in addition to a daily key-note address.

Yesterday, a panelist was presented with a question. During the answer, the panelist made an interesting statement; the statement sums up the problem. The panelist said, “every law review is different, you’ll learn as you go. You’ll find that you are just starting to be effective and be familiar with how to ‘run the show’ just before you graduate”.

In short, it seems just when we feel we understand how things work, it’s time to turn to something else and let someone new step in. I ran into this problem on my mission.

The MTC got me excited about going out and teaching the Gospel. But I soon learned, when I arrived in Colorado, I didn’t know what I was doing. After about 18 months, I felt as though I was starting to understand. I was at the top of my “game” when I left. Why didn’t the MTC prepare me? Why didn’t my mission-prep class prepare me? Why wasn’t my trainer (a very good missionary (zone leader and all)) able to convey what I had when I left?

Isn’t this analogous to life? Those who have lived a long time typically have great insight. But these insights can’t be channeled. Wisdom seems only to come through experience. Wisdom can be shared, but it is only received in the form of abstract ideas. The person receiving the ideas cannot completely acquire them until the same experiences giving rise to the wisdom are experienced.

It is impossible to transmit the understanding necessary to be successful. We struggle until we understand on our own. When we understand, our time in that sphere is over. So, even if understanding from experience could be channeled, there is no time to transmit it anyway.