Korean Memorial War - Jonjeng

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their Mistakes”

That was from Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. Wilde has always managed to impressed me with most of his works. With the ever-twisting plot and sharp-witted stinging epigrams. Humourous and also scandalous.

Anyway, back to the quote.

When you really think hard bout it, we really go all the way to name something bad to something less bad, just for the sake of comforting ourselves. We feel bad associating ourselves with things or incidents that bears negative marks. Therefore, we make ourselves feel better by giving it another name. I don’t know if that is good or bad. Perhaps it carries no weight. Perhaps it’s circumstancial. Perhaps it’s neither.

This is how i see it, at this very moment. If i were to say i made a mistake, the vocabularies that would run through my mind would be like “dumb”, “stupid”, “fool” etc. However, if i were to say i’ve had an experience of such, i’d be associating myself with “wiser now”, “lesson well taught”, “awareness” etc. You see the difference there? The difference may seem insignificant, but the impact may turn out substantial. Especially when it’s expressed verbally.