A Legacy of Experience

There sometimes seems to be a disposition to assume that the lessons which another generation has learned don’t apply to the present. And seemingly on this assumption, young people are often impatient with the counsel and cautioning of parents. But this they should know: that it is more foolish to spurn a legacy of experience than to spurn a legacy of goods or of gold.

There are two ways by which the lessons of life are learned: by our own experience and by the experience of others. When we read, we are drawing upon the experience of others. When we go to school, we are taught the experience of others. We learn of the laws or theories they have discovered, of the conclusions they have come to.

The experience of others is a great heritage, and the more we learn from it the less of life we waste. If every researcher insisted on going back to the beginning to perform all the experiments that all his predecessors had performed, life would largely be wasted in proving what had already been proved. If every explorer were to ignore all previous exploration, life would largely be wasted in finding what had already been found. If travelers were to ignore the road signs and danger signals, life could largely be wasted in repeating mistakes that other men have made.

We have a great heritage of revealed and discovered truth. But we lose a lot of life when we ignore what has repeatedly been proved and insist on going back to the beginning again and again.

And as to you who are young and sometimes impatient with the counsel and precautions of parents, this you should know: In their love for you, they are only trying to pass on to you a legacy of experience, even as they would pass on precious heirlooms or a legacy of money or of property. They are only trying to pass on the knowledge of some timeless principles that do not change simply because the times have changed.

The more you can learn from the past, the less you will have to pay for the costly and painful process of trial and error. And deliberately throwing away experience from reliable sources is fully as foolish, if not more foolish, than deliberately throwing away tangibles.