Latest / Wanzology / Experience Is Everything!
Transcript
- Experience Is Everything Dee dee-deet deet dee deet dee, dee dee-deet deet dee deet dee. Doot doot doo-doot doo… You good? I hope you're good. I'm pretty good. Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY!! I am your host, The Wanz, coming to you direct and live from Shoreline, Washington, north of Seattle, YAY!!! I'm in a very different mood today. I'm a little more optimistic than usual. I can't explain why, but I'll just go with it. I hope that you and yours are doing well. Let's get into what's going on. Today, I would like to talk about experience. I'm not sure where you're at since I can't really see or talk to you, but I can bet that you have lived enough life that you have memory of how things used to be and how you used to deal with things and everything that happened then, behind you, that led up to now where you're at. Based on those things that you did before, you have a pretty good idea of what to do when things come at you from the future. I had a psychiatrist who labeled that evidence, but it's probably known more by its most common term, experience. We all have experience. Every single human being on the planet has experience. That's how infants grow to be toddlers, toddlers grow up to be small children, small children grow up to be teens and young adults all the way to adults until they die. We all have experience, if we stick around, of course. But here's the thing, what most people don't realize or forget often is that their experience is their own. Nobody else has YOUR experience and vice versa. When you get to a certain age, you start noticing other people have been places that you've been, seen movies that you've seen, played a video game that you used to play. Maybe they went to the same school that you did after you were there or before you were there. Either way, doesn't matter, you have an association with a total stranger who may have done or seen the same thing you have. But here's the rub, just because you've done the same thing doesn't mean that you have the same experience. Experience is unique to every single person. All of us have our own unique experiences. Let's take McDonald's drive-through as our first example. I bet there's a small number of people, percentage-wise, that have never been through the drive-through at McDonald's in the last five years. That experience has changed in the last five years because now they have an app that you can order your food on the phone, and by the time you get to the drive-through, you give them a code, and they give you your food. Hence, you don't have to wait as long for them to prepare your order. Now, my first job in 1977 was at McDonald's. We didn't have that kind of stuff. So what do you think brought on the technology to serve you your food faster? Well, it was an evolution based on experiences that came before. Don't think so? Do you remember when they didn't have automated ordering? Do you remember when they didn't have parking spaces where you could wait for your order to be specially cooked for you, and you went and parked in that little thing and then somebody brought your bag out with your stuff? Maybe you remember when they didn't have those push-button touchscreen kiosks, they had actual people taking your order All of that is experience, right? The advances in providing faster service has led to two things, less people to pay and faster service. You, the customer, don't have to wait as long as you used to, and there are not as many humans needed to produce your order as there used to be. That's all based on experience. How about going to Disneyland? Have you been to Disneyland before? Do you know anyone else who's been to Disneyland? Have you talked to them before about your experience going to Disneyland, compared it to theirs? How was it? Did you have more fun than they did, or did they have more fun than you did? What rides did you go on? What rides didn't you go on, and why? Disneyland may be a big, huge bucket of an answer, but it's an example that I'm trying to be as general as possible. Because your experience with almost everything is shared with other people, but your perspective on what happened, what actually garnered your experience, might be different. So what do you call it when you have the same experience with something, but it's different from somebody else's experience with the same thing? I don't know what that's called. I just know that it's important for you to give yourself credit for those experiences. Here's another example. If you ride a bicycle now, there was probably a point in your life when you needed training wheels in order to ride a bicycle. Usually, that's how most of us humans start out riding a bicycle, we have training wheels. So your experience the first time that those training wheels were removed might be different from, oh, anyone's experience after having their training wheels removed. But there's similarities, right? Both of you were probably scared. Both of you were probably wobbly, and the front wheel was turning back and forth really quickly, and you were trying not to fall, and you were scared and blah, blah, blah, blah, but you don't think about that now. Now, you just get on a bicycle and push off and pedal, and it's no big deal, as do most people. But everyone can share that one experience of the first time riding without training wheels. So I say all these things to ask this one question: What makes you think that your experience in life is completely, totally unique? What makes you think that you're the only one who has gone through the things that you have been through when you know there are other people who have more than likely done the same things as you? Experience is everything for us humans. That means it's a reference book. Our past has all our experiences. I was told by a shrink once, we are all the sum of all our experiences at any given time. So ten minutes from now, you'll have the experience of listening to what I'm saying for the first time or third time or whatever, right? And we'll have that in common. Now, pick a complete and total stranger, go back in their timeline, compare it to your timeline. Where were you guys at? New Year's Eve two thousand and twenty, two thousand and twenty-three, two thousand and twenty-five, where were they? Were you guys in the same place? Same city? Same hemisphere? Don't know. But I can guarantee you, if you were both alive, you both know sorta, kinda where you were. Now, how does this benefit a human, you ask? That's what I ask. How does this benefit anybody? Having a reference, having experience. Well, what it does is it allows humans to compare experience. My experience in singing Ave Maria probably is not the same as Rod Stewart singing Ave Maria. Definitely not the same as Katy Perry or Chapel Rome or Lady Gaga singing Ave Maria, even though we've all sung it Your experience is unique to your life because it's the only one that you really have access to until someone shares their experience with you. That being said, ask yourself this: how many times have you learned something from someone else's experience? How many times have you listened to someone else tell you what happened to them and you learned something from it? How many times have you told someone about your experience with something and they've learned something from it? Don't know? I don't either. But what I do know is that, in my opinion, experience is everything when it comes to human beings, and if we shared our experiences more often with other human beings, do you think we would gain a deeper understanding of each other? I do. I did an interview this morning talking about technology and music having to do with my experience coming up as a singer, songwriter, musician, going through the whole ‘Thrift Shop’ process and what happened after. The interviewer said, "Wow, you've got lots of stories." And my reply was, "Everyone has." Everyone has lots of stories. Most people don't share those stories, and I'm curious as to why. If you went to camp when you were in elementary school, how many other grown-ups do you know now that went to camp when they were in elementary school? What was their experience? Where was it? That's a story. What about your first solo drive experience after getting your license? You were driving the car by yourself. How many people have had that experience? What I'm doing is I'm pointing out commonalities, and this is my reason for that. If we as humans started focusing on the similarities that we share rather than the things that divide us and make us different from each other, how much do you think that would improve the relations that we have with each other? If you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds movie, you're still afraid of crows and seagulls. Or if you've seen the original Jaws movie and you're afraid to go swimming. Or you've seen the very first Star Wars movie, which is Episode IV: A New Hope, and you get a smile on your face because you remember the first time you saw it and you liked it. What about your experience in school with addition, subtraction, division, multiplication? How were those? Ask yourself this. Do you remember when you didn't know how to figure out what five times five was? Now, you've figured it out and you explain it to someone else how to figure out what five times five is, and they get it. They understand it now because you explained it to them. How did that make you feel? How did that make you feel? It is my opinion that that feeling is the secret to life itself. Feeling that way and helping others to feel that way is the key to it all. That's what life should be like. It should be full of those feelings, not the other ones. Your opinion may differ. All I wanna make sure to impart on you is that your experience in your life is parallel with everyone else's experience in their life. If you find that you have something in common with someone, especially a complete stranger, does that change your opinion of that complete stranger? Do you feel a little more connected? Do you feel a little more separated? Which is it? As long as there are human beings on this planet, and that's gonna be for a long, long, long time, walking on two legs upright, nose in the middle, two eyes, two handles on the side called ears, that's gonna be a Homo sapien, the only species of Homo Sapien on the planet. At some point, doesn't matter where they are or where you are, there are going to be similarities. Maybe they're gonna be right-handed just like you. Maybe they're gonna be left-handed just like you. Maybe they're going to be able to speak another language while you can only speak one. Maybe they've been on a jet plane and you haven't. Maybe they've been on an ocean cruise and you haven't. Maybe you've climbed a mountain and they haven't. I'll close with this. I realized that every single human being has a story, and I am of the belief that the more that we share our stories with each other, and I don't mean just family or friends, I mean everybody. As long as we share our stories, we can learn more about each other and find more similarities rather than differences. Now, do you think, like I do, that the more things we have in common, the less things we're going to find that separate us and make us different? Will you feel closer, more relatable, more able to understand another person's point of view based on their experience because they had the same situation but a different outcome? Maybe they grew up in a different culture. Maybe they grew up in a different economic climate. Maybe they grew up in a different family of origin, but you still have similarities. Go forth and find the similarities with everyone that you meet, especially strangers. So that's your challenge. You'll be amazed. Would you rather be amazed or would you rather stay locked in your own brain thinking that you already know? Just because you think you know doesn't mean that you do, because it's experience that teaches us. Experience is everything. Don't get it twisted!! Thanks so much for, uh, checking this out today, I appreciate it. Pass it along to your homies, your friends, Romans, countrymen, whoever. I will see you, well, sort of, later. Bye!!!