Blindsiding experiences

Had a slowed-down weekend. I know it doesn't make sense for a person who's not working nor studying to say that, but the thing is my brain tends to be really active even if I'm sitting down doing nothing. Whether it is active-productive or not, that's another story. Haha. So I did one of my favourite-est things to do, taking a walk in the park. It's the one thing I'll really really really miss about the UK, the vast parks and the clear blue skies (yes, we do have clear blue skies when we do). Plus it's Autumn, which means the colours are amazing; even more vivid this year apparently due to the funky prolonged wintery season we've been having, =)

 Click! Can see the morning dew on the autumn loves, =)

Slipped and sat on this large tree trunk, haha

The other favourite stuff I did (I have a lot of favourite stuff actually) is to listen to inspiring talks, my main source now is from TED Talks and Good Life Project, tons of yummy stuff there. Oh, and reading interesting articles as well. So, as I was trying to consolidate all these new information I've been receiving, one thought crossed my mind : a lot of these inspiration came from people who have "been through, done that" and thus can impart their wisdom, but what if it's suitable for them or people who have gone through what they've been through, and not necessary people who are still green and yet to hit those milestones. Would the advice that came from someone twice our age make any sense at our current age, or are we trying to blindside the experiences we are suppose to have so we fail less/make less mistakes. I'm not sure if I'm even making sense here.

Look at the amount of information we can gather just by the tips of our fingers. Type something into Google and you're bound to find some Guru telling you about something which pretty sounds like it makes sense because we are not there yet to determine its authenticity. I hope I don't come across as cynical here, but I was just wondering if this information bombardment can sometimes be creating a shell for us to hide from the real experiences meant for us rather than give us a safe platform as a base. Of course, we can debate what is "real" or not, but I'm defining real in terms of actually being in the arena, actually carrying out a plan and failing it, of owning our own failures. And obviously we can't avoid failures just because we've maximised the number of good advices we take from 50 wise people, sometimes things fail because that's part of life.

Take gratitude for example. I'm a huge proponent of it, because for the longest time, even right now, it is a value that I live by. There are tons of articles, talks, speeches out there that remind us to be grateful, how to be grateful, when to be grateful; even articles on how gratitude can stunt our growth. Basically we have information that covers the whole spectrum, pretty wholesome if you ask me. But with some much information available, how many of us still actively seek experiences that help us make our own information, experiences that we can call our own despite certain universal differences with the rest of the world?

My point here is, information bombardment can sometimes make us want to blindside life by forgoing certain experiences when we take too much advice, when we listen to everyone except ourselves. This is not a license to be an asshole and go around rebutting every single person, but I also think that there is an infinite amount of experiences out there for each of us which can never be claimed by the vast amount of information already available.

So let this be a reminder to us, and myself, that we need to seek our experiences, own our experiences. This week, let's all go out there, with the advice we decide to take and with the heart of adventure, and find some to call our own.