Do you believe there is an experience that is so important that you’d feel comfortable saying something like this?
I say you haven’t really lived until you’ve faced personal adversity of some type. It’s really hard to imagine life without struggle.
But anything else–that’s not bodily function related, that is–comes across as smuggish, IMHO. I could say something like, “You haven’t really lived until you’ve been to Paris”, but most people will never leave their country of origin, let alone visit a place like Paris. I could say, “You haven’t really lived until you’ve fallen in love”, but falling in love is a not universal experience either.
Because falling in love isn’t a universal experience. It’s a very common experience, but there are a lot of people who haven’t fallen in love who are very much alive and self-actualized.
Falling in love is not the same thing as experiencing love, which is probably as close to a universal experience as you can get. I can’t imagine being happy without having first-hand experience with love. Falling in love, though, is different.
I take any “You must do X” with a grain of salt, mainly because I seem to have weird ideas of what’s good, or fun. I hate beer. I hate, hate, hate jalapenos. I hate sports, and anything promoted as a “chick flick,” going back as far as those Molly Ringwald movies when I was in high school. I hate meat, and that is the major reason I’m a vegetarian. I hated the TV show ER. I hate potato chips. I hate going clothes shopping.
I like silent movies, cars with manual transmissions, a lot of TV shows that got cancelled after 10 episodes (examples: Cafe Americain, Outsourced). I liked *Masterpiece Theater *when I was in middle school. It was my favorite show when I was 12. I liked the pilot episode of Friends, so I was sure it was going to get cancelled before the end of the first season. I liked living in Moscow in 1977. I like going to restaurants alone (I bring a book). I like both dogs and cats, and think the “Everyone is either a dog-person, or a cat-person” maxim is stupid. I like classical music, but I don’t particularly care for Mozart. I like fruit unadorned, and I like plain yogurt. I love going to book stores. I love reading stuff about serial killers, but I can’t stand it when bad things happen to animals.
I have absolutely no problem with the fact that I had a c-section, other than, I wish I’d know it would turn out that way, so I could have avoided the 27 hour labor. I laugh at women who want a birth “experience” and think they failed if they had a c-section and a healthy baby. I think women who think the “ring of fire” experience is necessary for mother-child bonding are nuts, but FWIW, I had the physical experience during the failed forceps attempt. I could have done without it, and I would love my son just as much.
So, I’m really skeptical of any experience being one-size-fits-all.
I think there is no universal experience, apart from basic metabolic activities (eating, breathing, sleeping, etc.).
If an experience is universal, then everyone experiences it, and you can’t divide the world into people who have/haven’t experienced it.
I think you and HoneybadgerDC are onto a couple of good ones: adversity (of a kind which causes you to rise to the occasion, as opposed to simply hunkering down into survival mode), and finding something about which you care deeply. For the latter, that something could be another person, or it could be a cause of some sort.
Which is why the saying comes across as smug to my ear and why I would avoid saying it.
I can’t imagine a tactful person saying “You haven’t lived until you’ve fallen in love” unless they are knowingly addressing someone who has experienced it. And if that’s the case, why even say it? And if they are speaking to someone who hasn’t experienced it, they are implying that person’s life is deficient somehow. Which of course is offensive. So it just seems like an unnecessary thing to say, IMHO.
Hmm. I’d say ‘being responsible for kids you are genetically related to’ is about the only thing I believe fits. That seems to change people’s personalities on a fundamental level.
The whole phrase is far too smug indeed; not only implying that the speaker really has lived, but also that the recipient is ‘living’ something of a sham.
I imagine certain unbearable parents have applied the phrase to child-bearing.
No-one has lived until they have experienced my consciousness, being as you are simply elaborate fictions dreamt up by it.
If there’s any one place a person must visit, it’s Yellowstone. But I wouldn’t say that someone who hasn’t been there hasn’t lived; I would say that their life is in that regard deprived.
I’ll see you Yellowstone and raise you the Grand Canyon. As impressive at it looks in photographs, you can’t possibly comprehend the scale and majesty of it until the instant when you round a turn and first catch a glimpse of it in person, let alone walk right up to the edge of it.
I remember the first time I stould in a giant redwood forest. I was an adult but stould like a 5 year old in total amazement and awe. The grand canyon affected me the same way.
I only got as far as Thermopolis… (But it was a very nifty little vacation spot! Hot springs, mineral terraces, etc. Sort of a micro-Yellowstone. I hanker to visit again!)
Trust me, the genetic connection is not necessary. Good Lord, no.
But it isn’t universal either. There are many people who don’t want to be parents, and because of that, they’d make lousy parents. Some of them are parents anyway, and absolutely suck at it because they clearly don’t give a damn about figuring out how to do a halfway decent job of looking after their kids. So no, it’s not universal.
ooo, I agree with you monstro, I hate “you haven’t lived until…” but say you have done the thing but were pretty meh about it. Then, “you weren’t doing it right”
Different people are different! Other people not doing or liking things your way is allowed!
