Experiences - They vary

All of us know that no two fingerprints are the same. Maybe, we should add one more saying ‘No two experiences are the same’.

Just think about it – You must have had instances when two different friends had uploaded pictures of their holiday to Paris on Facebook, but the pictures of the two would be completely different. The pictures would be different in terms of their posture, their emotions and their expressions, etc. In fact, don’t be surprised when you notice that both set of pictures have been clicked at the same place, like the Eiffel Tower, but yet, the description put by the two people are as different as chalk and cheese.

Now why would a picture taken at the same place by two different people look so different (other than the Eiffel Tower in the background looking the same in both the pics!)? The simple answer to that is because the picture is actually telling you about the experience of that person in that moment at that place. And the reality is that the experience of each person is different due to a number of factors and place is just one of those factors that plays a role in building that experience.

In fact, if you think deeper, you will realize that not only are experiences of different people different, but even the experience of the same person is different on different occasions, even though the place may be the same or the event may be the same.

An experience is a summation of various things that are part of a given moment that come together and form what we call an experience. What that means is that even if one of those various things is different from the earlier experience, the entire experience would be different. Confusing?

Let me try and simplify. According to my hypothesis, an experience is formed with the help of a number of factors – place, time of day, your own mood and mood of others, friends/relatives who are there with you, the kind of music in the background, the quality of food and drinks being consumed, the kind of weather, the occasion, the kind of customer service being offered. (This is not an exhaustive list and one can easily add more factors that play a critical role).

The point here is that if any of these factors change either for you or for someone else, the experience will also change. Often, one hears the use of the term ‘A sense of déjà vu’. What this means is that what  one is witnessing or experiencing is coming pretty close to what one has seen or experienced before (may not necessarily be exactly the same). That is when one immediately comes up with this as the human mind knows that it is very rare that you get to experience the same thing again and again (unless it is a Monday morning blue!) and if you can manage to do that, either you are lucky or you need a change!