Why people don't really understand what you're talking about until they've experienced it themselves

I just came across a website full of advice on how to get the most out of life. How to 'hack life', essentially. No points if you can guess the site.

I realised, reading lists entitled things like "If You Don’t Do These Now, You’ll Regret 10 Years Later" and "10 Life Lessons People Should Learn Before They Turn 30", that life advice is only kindof helpful once you actually learn it from life itself. The reason is this: life advice all sounds obvious. "Money doesn't solve your problems" and "Don't take anything for granted". We all 'know' these things. We're taught them in movies, at school, on 'inspirational' posters, greeting cards, songs, etc, etc. But actually, no. We're not really taught them. We're told about them. And we think we've learned them. We say "yep, good, glad I know that and won't stuff up my life as a result".

I know this because this is what I've done my entire life. I've spent most of my life as a fairly intelligent, capable person, believing that I am actually very wise, having been exposed to much life teaching, and having thought about a lot of the 'deeper' things in life. I fooled myself into thinking that I was therefore prepared for life.

But no. What I was prepared for was a pop quiz on 'how to live', not actually How To Live. I've found it's taken me many years of my life thus far to learn what now seem very basic, fundamental life lessons, which can be summed up in little platitudes for inspiring the masses.

For example, I'm now 26, and am only just realising, after about 19 years of school/uni, that I've been pursuing things for largely the wrong reasons. I always thought I was "giving myself a headstart in life" and "working to reach my potential" by "taking opportunities" like joining the school debating team, teaching piano, working with school kids, doing all manner of extracurricular stuff because it looked good on my resume. It made people go "wow". Or at least I thought it did. Whatever, I thought it earned me more approval, probably in the eyes of my parents, and gave me more validity as a person.

Whatever platitudes I gorged myself on turned out to be pretty empty. Recent life changes have thrown me into an early 'mid'-life crisis, even after I thought I'd already begun to find my 'true' calling, in playing and writing music. Even if that is a true calling of mine, I don't even know how to do it because I enjoy it. I only know how to write my music for someone else. To write my masters thesis for the benefit of the markers and my supervisors. It is so ingrained in me to follow the structures set my others around me that I don't know how to construct my own, from my own vision.

So, you can tell me all you want that I should "follow my dreams" and "do what I love", but until I truly have done those things, I don't believe I will know what they mean, though I always thought I did.

Take away: don't expect people to know what you mean. Expect them to take away from what you say things that they have already begun to experience and understand. Don't expect to fully understand what someone means by what they say as it is backed by their individual life experience, and you are interpreting it with your own.

To some extent, we truly are 'alone in our own mind', and yet, we can still connect with others through language. Just don't expect that hearing words means that you understand their meaning. Fill your dry knowledge with fertile, lush experience and don't settle for anything less.