It seems like such a silly word to try and define: experience.  It just happens.  It’s happening right now.  But as I am finding, there is much more to a word than your perception of a word.  It can be as complex and nuanced as you are willing to engage in.  The question, then, becomes what are you willing to engage in, fully, without control and knowing you enter into a thing with vast unknowns to navigate.

The learning is as much about unlearning as it is about novelty.  I can do the same thing a hundred different ways, or, I could do a hundred different things the same way; each has their own means of refinement or rutting.  Are you open or are you forcing open?  Are you stuck internally and pretending that external adventure will free you?  What does free even mean, and is what you actually crave security, in tests you know you will pass because they’re all the same test (just in different contexts)?

Seeking  “what will this take away?”  more than “what will I gain from this?”  turns us towards receptiveness.

It helps break you from this culture of accumulation, from the habits that reinforce it and are reinforced upon us.  The notion of perhaps this is enough, at any time, seems like a crazy consideration for my Gen X mind.  Everything was transactional, a commodity to be ledgered.  The compounded futures of time and money seemed far more valuable than anything I could do with it in the present moment.  I remember, Dad.  It’s not how much you make but how much you save.

But then I watched this man die, and was the only constant that was able to actively care for him as he did.  You cannot be human to endure this.  You have to exist as a steady performer who cannot fail.  All of the skills and all of the resourcefulness you spent a lifetime cultivating seemed meant for this moment without an end.  I often wonder who chooses you being the chosen one.

I always knew it would be relationships that would kill me.  And it almost did.  Then, the one person who was human enough and close enough to bring me back, failed. And I was finished.

The loop ended.

I saw all that I was lacking and how the many self-imposed rules were serving an idea rather than a person.

This is what I have come to know experience is for — establishing a new loop or way of being.

Whether it be tragic or joyful doesn’t really matter because one eventually feeds into the other.

I could tell you how I bounded out of the car to capture this feature photo.  I could tell you of the sincere and authentic being who chose to accompany me.  I could try and describe the perfect quiet of being the only one on a snowy mountain ridge, or the magnificent light and distant peaks my eyes were taking in, or how a swarm of swallows flew through me as they rose and disappeared from the cliff.  But words could never do it justice.  You had to be there, and even then, you would have picked up different pleasures and noticings than I.

An experience might be the only thing better than an idea.

It is when reality amalgamates from the power of your senses and attention and interest joining forces simultaneously.

It is truly awesome.  And, like all awesome things, you have to want to participate in them.  And let them change you.  And wish to be changed by them.  It is an agreement of desire, one you might find is mutual if you let yourself love and be loved.