Definitions can point to meaning and lead to understanding
Synonyms for the earliest usage "experience" include: attempt, trial, try, and test. It looks like each of these synonyms is about the purposeful action of a learner. Each seems to be about a person initiating a process. The action continues with an intention in mine.
Each of these early synonyms may be seen as a name for the type of process initiated. An attempt an intention to try something tempting. A trial could begin with the intention to try try something that might test the limits of one's ability or capacity. A try could be an intent to separate or sift some ideas, materials, or abilities to better understand that particular set of things, capacities, or ideas. A test could be the intent to simplify or purify something to better understand it.
So a happening isn't much of an experience unless we are paying attention to it and giving it some thought.
From its beginnings "experience" has been about learning, about finding out for oneself, checking it out, about awareness with hope of understanding.
My red dictionary first defines "experience" as apprehension or perception of an object, thought, emotion, or event through the senses or the mind. So a happening in our life may not be an experience until we have identified it and thought about it. The definition that I am looking at now says that the way to experience is through the mind or through the senses. I find that interesting. Mor directly it says that apprehension and perception are through the senses or the mind. I wonder how one might perceive or apprehend without the mind.
The compilers of my red dictionary believed that we can experience in our minds without concurrent uses of our senses. That seems right. But could not experience be sensual without conscious awareness. Could our body possible learn from an experience that did not reach the conscious mind? Sometimes it is difficult to draw an exact line between doings or happenings.
We have a lot to learn about the mind. We can learn more of value about learning. We may be called on to relearn where to buy good ice-cream.
The same red dictionary also calls experience, active participation in events or activities leading to the accumulation of knowledge or skill. That sounds right to me. I do notice that wisdom is not mentioned. I suspect that our awareness must be engaged during "the active participation" mentioned.
My blue dictionary calls experience "the usually conscious perception or apprehension of reality of an external, a bodily, or psychic event." Reality seems to be important here. I may have to check the definitions of "perception" and "apprehension" to see if they are mutually exclusive. A psychic event is a mental happening. It is beginning to look as though experience is really a big deal.
Experience may be necessary to learning and not just helpful! It also seems that we can get some experience just by thinking! There seems to be a difference between an experience and a learning event, but I am not very sure of the nature of that diference. I seem to remember hearing someone say that "learning entails movement and experience entails action," but that does not help me. Could an experience and a learning event be the same happening? Could any learning event be an experience? Doesn't it appear that an experience, or a learning event can both include one's thought and that perhaps it must?
Can perception and apprehension get us from sensing to approaching reality? Could they also lead us astray? Luckily we can compare one experience with other experiences.
My Dictionaries and the internet all refer to perception and apprehension in their definitions of experience. In psychology, education and elsewhere there are books devoted to each of these terms. It sometimes seems difficult to keep things simple. Let me try for a simple understanding that retains much of its power. We might call both perception and apprehension both ''a taking a hold of an event" or as "taking a snapshot of a process." This makes both terms the noting and registering of a sight, sound or other sensing How about as describing the progression of a process? I give up the idea of simplicity for now, but I have been giving these two words and their relationship some consideration. It would be nice to say I have seen the reality, the whole reality, and nothing but the reality.
I do suspect that you now have a better understanding of "experience" than you may believe.
My blue dictionary also simply calls "experience" "direct participation in events." The quality of that participation including your awareness of seems important.
A synonym for "apprehend" is "understand." As that is true, it is also true that to truly experience we need an understanding of that which is going on or has happened. So, to experience, and hopefully to really learn, we need to consciously in the doing and happening, note some of the sequence or order of action, and to remember some of that order or sequence related to that event or sequence of events. We probably ought to have the intent to discover pattern, order, and sequence.
We are better able to approach truth and reality with our mind than with our eyes. When you get dizzy consider relaxing for a while.
We may say that we are experiencing while we are acting on our intention to actively and consciously participate in a happening or doing and allowing ourselves to understand that which is occurring. Experience be a beginning to learning and a way to meaning and knowledge. We may also say that our understanding is growing as we observe similar patterns in similar events.
Our experience can be our powerful teacher. It is an activity we best do in active awareness. It can be a process which we consciously carry out. We participate in the action and note its pattern or order.
Oh! Its fair to learn from the experience of another. In doing so you may be helped by your realistic imagination.
Observation, and its quality, is a powerful aid to the quality of your experience. Good philosophers and scientists tell us that observation is an important part of the participation needed in gaining powerful experience.
We can learn to be appropriately relaxed in our experiencing. There are degrees of participation, degrees of awareness, degrees of understanding and we do not always benefit from being fully engaged. A relaxed experience can be a very good one.
Experiencing is a process. We can get some useful understanding by standing under the bull. We might learn more of bovine sex from our observation of a field of cattle. Still we can learn while standing under the bull. And if it is a cow we stand under, that's no bull. Even so such standing may be more like taking a snapshot than it is like filming a process. Observing the process is often the more useful experience.
Observation is an excellent first step, but often the better part of an experience takes place in our mind. We benefit much by thinking over that which we have observed. We can reach out with our senses and our mobility, but our grasp on learning, understanding, and knowing is mental, psychic. Think it over can move us closer to the power of reality.
Has reading this been an experience?
Thank you for reading and congratulations!
rcs