Oscar Wilde once said, “Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes.”, and these are the mistakes that teach us the most about life and help us get through the toughest of situations. But only our mistakes and no one else’s teach us about life, because we learn to pick ourselves up when we fall, not when someone else does.
We usually associate old age with wisdom and experience, which has been earned through hard work and overcoming various obstacles. We even turn to our elders and seniors for advice regarding hardships and relationships, considering that they have been through those situations. But is the previous generation always better than the youth just because they are experienced?
On the other hand, the youth now has many ideas which can revolutionise today’s world, making it a better place to live in. There are young people out there in the world who lack in experience but are filled with passion and devotion to their work and cause, which might be enough to fulfil their dreams and goals of making the world a better place.
Bill Gates had a peculiar interest in computers when it was first introduced in his preparatory school and at the age of 13, he had designed a game of tic-tac-toe which allowed people to play the game against the computer. His enthusiasm for computers was so intense that he decided to drop out of Harvard University, where he studied computer science, and start his own software company. And that was the birth of ‘Microsoft’.
Another great example of the youth ideas is Mark Zuckerburg, who created Facebook, a social networking site, in his college years in a dorm room with no experience and is now a man worth 34.8 billion US dollars with people all over the world using his website as a source of being connected to family and friends.
Teenagers like Robert Nay, Cameron Johnson, Ashley Qualls, Adam Hildreth and Michael Dunlop are the youngest self made millionaires who taught themselves about internet and websites in order to fulfil their goals and came up with ideas that had helped millions around the world, with innovations ranging from designs skills, food business, web hosting to software creation, apps creation, business advice blogs and online shopping. Without any prior experience and advice, they were earning six figure salaries as teenagers.
Experience comes from the way one handles a situation. While for someone a situation was a turning point in their life, it might have been a downfall for another one. We are always advised to excel in whatever subjects we study, pursue higher education from the best colleges and get a good job to support our families, and same would have been with all young entrepreneurs. While Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard University to fulfil his dream of starting a software company, his experience of dropping out of college and starting a company may not always be helpful for the younger generation if they do not have the passion or the drive.
Many of the youngsters from today’s youth have brilliant and unique ideas which can help the world economically as well as ecologically, but they lack the resources and support needed to kick-start their ideas. The youth comprises the majority of the workforce but are still denied various opportunities and chances to showcase their creativity and ideas due to lack of experience. Their ideas may also be dismissed, considering that they will not be supported by people in the past, according to the experience of the panel.
The old and the wise may have experience, but this experience may also stop them from taking risks, while the youth, which lacks in experience, may be willing to venture unexplored areas in different industries and take risks, provided they are given a chance to prove themselves.
While experience can inspire, it can also demoralise.
The curiosity and zeal of inexperienced youth may even help us in breaking barriers which may have been a cause of difficulties in the past, and forge a new path with different strategies, ideas and thoughts, breaking away from the orthodox thinking and inspiring people around the world to take risks and be brave.
Thus, the experience of others cannot teach us important lessons of life, as Oliver Wendell Holmes. Jr said,” A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”