A Broad Experience

Sometimes young people in a venturesome spirit seek to acquire an acquaintance with questionable practices, questionable places, and questionable people not with the idea of becoming involved in any unsavory situation, but just to “see” another side of life. Sometimes they suppose themselves to be immune to the taint of the things they only lightly touch, and sometimes they justify themselves in seeking unseemly sights, in frequently unwholesome places, and in “sampling” questionable things on the ground that such pursuits “widen” their experience and “broaden” their knowledge of life. But, if this be logic, may we not then ask: Wouldn’t we likewise be justified in robbing a bank for experience? Or in starting a forest fire for experience? Or in jumping off a building for experience? There are many things we might do merely for experience: for example, we never really know what it is like to be in a highway crash until we have been in one. But certainly no sane adviser of youth would suggest a crash as part of the recommended curriculum. Such experiences are scarcely to be sought after just to learn what they are like. And yet, to suggest that seeking or sampling questionable things is justified for winning a wider acquaintance with life is as irrational as to suggest that we invite any danger or disaster just to know what it is like. Our memories are what they are because of all our actions and impressions because of all the people we have known, all the things we have heard, all the sights we have seen, all the thoughts we have thought, and all the things we have done. And if we mix mud with what goes through the mind of man, it is still mud, even if it is called “experience,” and it still discolors all it touches. There are some things which even to touch (yes, even to see) are contaminating. And whenever we deliberately and needlessly seek out such things, we may momentarily fool ourselves but we can’t fool the markings on our memories. There are some experiences in life, which, even though allegedly “broadening,” we would do well to do without.