025-Measuring Experience

025-Measuring Experience, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

One of the frustrating things in life is when other people refuse to believe your ideas without first going through a confirmation process to prove you right or wrong. We all need to have confidence to trust and believe, but some people put themselves in the position of arbiter of everyone's experience.

This is often expected when one has a new concept in art or science, but, for example, my wife never dyes her hair, and her friends and colleagues generally refuse to believe this. They are teachers. They know best. They are her age - they have to dye their hair and therefore my wife must dye hers.

What are they afraid of that they must refute something so simple? Are they dishonest and by implication assume that others are the same?

I conceptualise without first counting bodies, and this is beyond belief for many people that I work with.

Imagine that you are a linguist - any theory can be checked by assembling a suitable array of books and counting words and phrases.

Imagine that you are a psycholgist - any theory can be checked by assembling a suitable array of people and counting their experiences.

Imagine that you are an engineer and you conceive of a new product - since you have yet to build an example, you cannot go out and collect a representative sample to count, nothing yet exists.

It can make a difference, people without objects or people to count have to learn to trust what cannot yet be counted. However, if you always have the luxury of counting, your loss is belief.

We love - but we do not have to love like our neighbours simply to ensure that what we have is love. And it is love, no matter what your experience is.