To find out how lovely something can be, you have to actually experience it.
Swimming.
Singing live in front of people.
Loving someone.
Allowing someone to love you.
Running your own business.
Having children.
Fostering children.
A friend of mine explored this idea of ‘experience’ with me very recently.
It was David Bradley, who played Billy Casper from Kes.
David stayed with me when he was visiting the North East last week.
Rainbows.
David referenced rainbows.
David asked us to imagine trying to describe a rainbow to someone that had never seen one.
One could take the ‘meteorological phenomenon’ approach.
Dispersion.
Refraction.
Reflection.
Or one could talk about colours and how they hang in the air.
There… but not really there.
Experience.
In the end, we agreed that no number of words can describe some things.
If you really want to know…
… you have to experience it.
2 Comments
Some things are diminished in their explaining. Stop talking. Take the other persons hand and lead them to and through the experience. Then you have a shared history and the world is a better place.
You’ve made 1+1=3 there I think Shaughn.
Expanded the story.
I’d not thought about the ‘shared experience’ part.
Occasionally, being slightly grumpy, I crave a kind-of ‘storming off’ to be by myself.
I suppose some people would refer to this as a cave that I want to retreat to.
But this stompy behaviour all goes wrong if I see a rainbow.
Or snowfall.
Because I want to share it with someone.
And normally the person I’ve just been daft enough to storm off from.
So yes.
I get you.
M.