Knowledge vs. Experience: The Tough Decision

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When it comes time to “do” something in life, the human mind often finds itself in a heated debate between knowledge and experience as being the determining factor. Education, research and professional opinions can easily conjure up a list of pros and cons that are oftentimes completely contradictory, and proceed to compare it to a similar list made using your own personal experience and advice from your family and friends, based on their own experiences, but which simply leads you back to square one: lying awake at night fretting about what to do.

As a young adult I have recently found myself making bigger decisions than I am used to. It started with what college to go to and has been followed by choosing a career path, selecting a husband, purchasing a home, and if those decisions weren’t monumental enough, now everyone starts asking about (or blatantly hinting) at the question of having babies!

The pressure can make a troubled decision-maker snap. Or in my case, the pressure turned me into a tormented decision-maker who can’t choose between an enchilada or a burrito even though deep down I know the ingredients are just about the same thing. Clearly, I needed to adjust my decision making process because neither the knowledge I had gleaned from my college education, nor the years of being a diligent reader, nor the experiences of other people were helping me continue moving through life gracefully.

The first thing I had to accept was, that it wasn’t the actual decision itself that was driving me crazy, it was what could happen afterwards. No one likes to be judged or criticized or even minutely questioned when they make a decision. The truth is, people will scrutinize you no matter which decision you make, simply because if they are the type of person who thinks that their own knowledge or experience is worth sharing then they will do it.

The take away?

Make sure I don’t judge people for their decisions and make sure I just support them.

Next, I had to accept that although I do appreciate the wise advice of someone who has lived through a situation I am currently going through, I don’t necessarily have to do what he/she did, because quite frankly I am not him/her. And also they probably would’ve turned out just as happy and loving if they had chosen to go to college B over college A anyway.

Third, I determined that my worldly knowledge and education, although expensive and required to get a job at any corporate office in America, was really nothing more than just facts about inanimate objects and theories. Science and Health dubs human knowledge as “evidence acquired from the physical senses, mortal beliefs and opinions…” This is a view that shows human knowledge is temporal, just like a mortal. So, is human knowledge really what I want to use to make a decision? Of course not, I want my decisions to be as immortal as my own spiritual self is!

Which led me straight to a decision on how to make decisions: I really just have to do what is the right thing, using spiritual knowledge of God, Love. It is a mindful path which leads me to be the most loving, caring, adventurous and good-humored spiritual being that I am. Decisions can be less about which human mortal path to take and more about choosing to have the best attitude and the most loving soul while continuing forward. By using this method to make decisions the pressure lessens and I can simply order the enchilada because it has a corn tortilla which my gluten intolerant husband can eat as well.