Bad Conversation Topics When Surrounded by Throwable Objects 5

TOPIC: If you are not a lesbian, or even a woman, could you ever have a lesbian experience?

I hope I have not offended anyone with the creative topic I have employed for this post, but the idea behind this topic is a great example of the main point I’m trying to divulge in this installment of organized, but sporadic, thoughts from my head.

Although my intentions stem from a place of goodness, I must preface it with the reasons I believe each of us must educate ourselves, to continue to educate ourselves beyond our years of formal education. So exercise patient; I eventually proceed to my argument.

Most adults advise children they must educate themselves to acquire decent employment and to achieve higher education to gain advancement in this employment. But our jobs or careers or our paychecks, although dependent on our level of education in most cases, are not the reason we must educate ourselves, learn how to learn, learn how to grow, learn how to think; the main reason it is important to continue to educate ourselves beyond formal schooling is for us to discover and sustain “happiness.”

Sound silly? Sound cliché? Well, here is a quick breakdown, with lack of variables and other occurrences to present a viable example as to my meaning, of how education leads to happiness.

Education = Thinking Practice

Thinking Practice = Acting Appropriately

Acting Appropriately = Less Time Spent on Life’s Everyday Drama

Less Time Spent on Life’s Everyday Drama = More Time to Learn, Discover, and Employ What Makes You Happy

The formula is actually more complicated than I present it, but for the purposes of this post, it accurately depicts my argument. It basically states if you stop educating yourself after you leave formal schooling, your life stays stagnant, constantly recycling itself, living the same problems over and over others have already experienced, basically living one of a billion facsimile-type lives, until, if you are lucky, you actually learn how to solve these problems, employ their solutions, and develop the ability to recognize them in the future. Our lives, our situations, and our problems do not differ much from anyone else's lives, situations, and problems inhabiting our world. Sure, circumstances or magnitudes might differ, but the cores of our daily problems (even problems requiring extended periods of time and energy) remain the same for everyone. But what if you could already possess the answers, or at least game plans, to everyday, mundane (or more substantial) problems before you actually experience them? 

But who owns the time to experience everything in life one needs to reach the highest levels of awareness and acceptance to discover happiness? Also, the experiences we endure are singularly limited due to nature, time, and laws (as the example in the topic) and ultimately, although extremely beneficial, life experience does not culminate in an efficient manner to gain awareness and acceptance.

So how can we acquire life experiences we can never have because of our natures, lack of time, and the fact they might lead us to imprisonment? It is actually an easy and common answer: READING.

The reason two year olds throw tantrums is not because they are immature or too young to understand what they want, because many adults I know throw similar tantrums when life does not transpire the way they desire it to as well. These tantrums stem from a two year old’s lack of vocabulary, the lack of the ability to express his/her emotions with the proper, specific words. Enter Reading: Reading builds our vocabularies so we will not become frustrated when trying to help someone understand our feelings, or more importantly, help us understand our feelings. 

Reading breeds thinking. With the vocabulary we acquire from reading, we can now practice higher level thinking, thinking about everything from what to say in a stressful situation to how to approach the cashier to coax him into the backroom to retrieve the item not on the shelf but you know is stored on a shelf in the back of the store. I know if you are alive, you think, but how many times have you uttered the phrases, "I just can't explain it," "I don't know how to tell you what I mean," "I know how I'm feeling, but I just can't find the words to make it make sense," or any such variety?

Thinking breeds writing, but maybe not with a pen or pencil or other writing tool (although physical writing is worth its weight in gold), but with our minds, because now we have the ability to organize our thoughts into viable, tangible efforts of our labors. We can study our thoughts (or physical writing), rethink, and form logical conclusions about the thoughts preceding our efforts. 

And then guess what? The process repeats and repeats and repeats:

Reading = Thinking = Writing = Reading = Thinking = Writing 

and so on and so on...

Now, reading about real life experiences cannot outweigh the value of actually experiencing them, I will concede this point, but as my topic suggests, if we are male we can never have a lesbian experience, but if we read about a woman having a lesbian experience we vicariously experience one ourselves, and as a result, become more aware and accepting of the trials and tribulations a lesbian we might encounter, lessening our anxiety concerning this situation, increasing our happiness and the chances the encounter will be worthwhile and lend growth. Some might argue a male can partake in a homosexual experience too, and of course they can, but no matter how you look at it, it would not resemble the characteristics of a lesbian experience.

If the example I am utilizing does not relate to you, or if it is confusing, think of something yourself possessing interest to you which you can never experience, which you would never have time to do (like count to a billion by ones; or travel the world on a schooner because our jobs would prohibit it); or something ending in imprisonment (like committing multiple murders for revenge purposes), and then think about how reading about these experiences might help you better understand the people and the world around you.

Happiness is out there. And if we all lived long enough, our experiences would probably lead us there on their own, but at what age? Sixty? Seventy? Eight? Ninety? By the time experience leads us to understanding the world, its people, yourself, and daily and long-term interactions, you would be too old to enjoy it. Reading simply propels us to a level of awareness and acceptance much faster, way faster, and builds our vocabularies and our stockpile of non-unique experiences (because writers are the masters of human nature, human experience, and human problems, simply sharing problems everyone endures at one point or another) along the way, helping us understand ourselves better. It is a win, win.

So the next time you find yourself in a situation you have never experienced, curse yourself for not having read a book about it. And then go pick up a book on the subject, read it, and feel the awareness and acceptance rush over you like a cool dousing of pool water on a hot summer’s day.

NOTE: If you do not see the merit of the argument presented in this post, you DEFINITELY need to go to your nearest library (the books are free there) and grab a stack of page-turners.