Box: Past Experiences

Afrikrown Annual Art Exhibition

The “box” series continues with the fifth installment on the titular name and you can read on the previous four by following the links. I feel past experiences are the single most important box that we are going to touch upon as it encapsulates the other titles as they are offshoots of this particular box we are treating today.

Past experiences can be seen as the sum total of life to this very point in time by virtue of the decisions we have made from the choices available to us and the external stimuli/events that have occurred to us that shape who we are now. It is not only what has happened to us but how we see those events and what we learn from them including the value we place upon them.

It is quite a broad scope as it includes a multitude of varied experiences like education, authority figures, culture, and traditions, and virtually every box there is as that sums up our past experiences which has a profound effect on who we have come to be at this very moment. This is a box like no other and can be broken down into two distinct areas as the “internal stimuli” and the “external stimuli”.

The internal stimuli are the decisions we take ourselves from a myriad of choices available to us which have consequences and accumulatively form a theory known as “decision streams”. Decision streams say that each decision made is a function of past decisions made that impact the current decision being made. Our past experiences in this regard often limit us as that is all we know and thus our decisions may not be the best choice but what our experience in life points us towards.

The external stimuli are the events that occurred to us by virtue of others and our social lifestyle and environment. The same event may happen to two people and they react differently to it based on how they view it as life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.

Living life and making decisions just based on past experiences is a recipe for disaster as we are all infallible and the impressions we’ve made in life are subject to error as we are only human, it is a narrow view on life in the grand scheme of things but the temptation to rely on it solely is very powerful as we only fully trust ourselves but we have to broaden our horizon.

Going forward, learning from other people’s experiences can teach us where not to repeat their mistakes and where we can forge ahead with our current lifestyle. We also need to gather much knowledge so as to open more choices and possibilities in our decision-making process as opposed to just relying on our past experiences

To better understand, head on to the origin of this article series.

Article 2 — Cultures and traditions

Article 3 — Peers and surroundings

Article 4 — Education

This article was written by Uaifo (uaifoojo@gmail.com) for Afrikrown.