I think experience has a lot to do with feeling "fulfilled". It's very hard to feel like your doing the right thing at all times / feel like what your doing is meaningful / not feel insecure unless you've already had lots of experiences to contrast. You can trick yourself into loving what your doing, but I think you'll always have this notion at the back of your head that you could be doing something more pleasurable / more fulfilling.
Through experiencing and understanding the "gist" of many things, you can single out the activities / lifestyle that brings you the most meaning and happiness. It's hard to truly "internalize" advice people share without being placed in a similar scenario. You can tell your kid "don't do drugs cause you'll become a bum", but until that kid sees his friends getting high and losing their integrity, he won't completely understand.
What seems to make the most sense is to experience as much as you can while your young, while being intentional and non committal.
- Why intentional? without intentionality in action, it's easy to get lost in the action and forget the purpose. Plus, when your intentional about experiencing new things, its easier to call yourself out on your bullshit ("I don't wanna try that cause I'm tired" -> "na it's cause I'm insecure")
- Why non committal? if you commit to everything you experience, it's easy to get lost in that experience and forget why you were doing it in the first place. If you decide to experience a ton of drugs and forget to be non committal, you could become an addict.
There are some experiences that don't really apply, or at least shouldn't apply. Experiences that shouldn't apply are those that take up a large amount of time and restrict your ability for future experiences. Ex: deciding to be a PhD as a "unique experience" when you're 18. This will take up a large amount of time and will restrict potential future experiences.
I think humans have to make mistakes to learn. It's really difficult to learn without making a mistake and connecting emotionally with the negative outcome. Also, I'd rather just have thousands of awesome stories and terrible stories than 100 good stories. At the end of the day, we're going to die. Consciousness is going to be lost. Everything will decay. May as well try to do something risky.
Types of experiences
- Overcoming insecurity
- Struggle
- Hustle
- Euphoria
- Status (achievement)
- Gratitude
- Flow
- Purpose
- Fear
- Frustration
- Understanding
- Love
- Compassion
- Exploration
They fit into much larger buckets, this division is for granularity. Some of these are causal, ex: compassion leads to love, or fear leads to overcoming insecurity, or understanding leads to compassion. Logically there is strong causality, but there are nuances between them when experienced emotionally. I find overcoming insecurity, hustle, euphoria, flow, status, love, and compassion the most fulfilling experiences based on scenarios I've lived in the past. My experience bucket is relatively dry though, I'm probably ignorant to true fulfillment.