“Yeah, I dabble in blogging.”

“Oh cool, what is your blog about?”

“General Shenanigans, and life lessons and what not.”

“How old are you? How many life lessons have you dealt with kid?”

I have had this conversation with multiple people on multiple occasions about how someone so young can speak intelligently on life lessons and lessons learned.

What it comes down to, is not judging a book by its cover….

At the ripe age of 23, I’ve bought a house, started two successful careers, graduated college, dabbled in the graduate school world, been to three continents, played almost every sport, started a small business, experienced love and experienced loss just to name a few.

Many societies value the elderly, and I do not disagree with this. The elderly must be doing something right to be able to stick around that long. Our grandparents and parents, aunts and uncles have all experienced more than us, because they have been around a lot longer. However, there is a huge difference between going through the motions of life, as opposed to experiencing life, drawing from those experiences, and learning something from it.

A 20-year-old could have handled the same things as a 40-year-old. Some children have had to step up in the absence of a parent and be the parent. Some children have to step up and work, or take care of their parents. Someone could have grown up in shelters their entire life, and when they become an adult, they get knocked because of their aggressive nature.

The truth is, you never really know someone until you talk to them and understand their story.

When you understand someone’s past, and understand their present, then you can judge their experience.

I had a conversation not too long ago with a woman who was a few years older than me. While chatting about life, she was shocked to find out I was 23 based on our interaction (don’t worry, the bald head is a choice….for now haha). What she said to me stuck out “Someone that young must have had a large amount of experience in their life”.

Age is a metric, a measurement of time, a gauge of how long we have lived and breathed and existed on earth.

But experience, experience is the contact of events; to experience something is to understand.

To experience something is not to just go through the motions, but to understand what is occurring.

And from there, you take your experiences, and from there, you draw life lessons.

The last story I will leave you with, is this: As a person who has sold their soul and worked at a job they hated, but the money was good, I had shared this lesson with a group in a passing conversation. A few months went by and out of the blue, one of the females in the group texts me and says…

“I was just stuck between choosing two jobs, and I picked the one where I am going to make less, but I think I will be a lot happier, so thank you” Out of the blue, on a sunny Wednesday, I got that message, from someone who I hadn’t talked to in months, and yet still made an impact on.

At the end of the day, don’t just go through the motions. Live your life and learn some lessons, so maybe one day you can pass it on and help someone out too.