And yet, I have also learned that experience, by itself, can easily mislead.
Two people may drink the same wine: one falls ill, the other feels no effect at all. It would be strange to conclude, on this basis alone, that the wine is poison ... or that it is harmless. The wise person pauses and asks: What is typical? What is rare? And how can we tell the difference?
Our own experiences matter. But they are only one data point in a world of enormous variation. Some bodies are unusually sensitive. Some circumstances are unusual. Some harms are real, and yet still uncommon.
This is why, when we wish to know what is generally true, we do not rely only on our own story, or even the stories of those closest to us. Instead, we gather many stories, from many people, across many conditions. We compare, we measure, and we look for patterns that persist beyond individual cases.
This does not mean dismissing those who suffered. It means refusing to turn suffering into a universal rule without sufficient grounds.
Wisdom, then, requires a certain humility: the willingness to accept that my experience may not be the norm. And also the courage to accept that sometimes the broader evidence tells a story different from the one my own life happens to tell.
If we abandon objective evidence whenever it conflicts with our personal experience, we are left not with truth, but with competing testimonies; each sincere, each partial, and none able to guide us reliably beyond ourselves.
The task of reason is not to silence experience, but to place it in context.
