Experience Our Teacher

It has been said that experience is the best teacher.  Interestingly, it is often the experiences that we don’t choose that teach us the most, for they tend to change our perspective. Heinrich Harrer, a famous Austrian mountaineer, was changed by one such unwelcome experience.  After being part of the first team to successfully summit the 25,000 Naga Parbat, Harrer was imprisoned in a British internment camp.  He later escaped and walked across the Himalayas to get to Tibet, where he spent seven years.  While he didn’t choose the experiences he had, they changed him.  The film made from his book, Seven Years in Tibet, is a powerful portrayal of that change.  In the beginning, he is arrogant, stubborn, and selfish, caring about little other than his own dreams and aspirations.  But he is a different man at the end of the film because he has learned to value people.

In his book, he describes what he called “wasted years”, time he spent chasing too many things at once.  Yet when he finally attained his selfish goals, he found himself dissatisfied, rather than fulfilled.  Like the author of Ecclesiastes, he found that neither money nor fame could fill the emptiness that was inside him.  It was only after being a prisoner that he could truly understand what it meant to be free.  On arrival, Tibet was simply a new place to explore for Harrer, but when he left, it was a culture and a people with value that should be preserved.   

Let’s shift gears now and see what we can learn from the experience of Bigwig, one of the main characters in Richard Adam’s Watership Down, which tells the story of the flight of a group of rabbits from their warren in response to a perceived danger and of their many adventures in their quest for a new home.  An experienced officer of unusual size and strength, Bigwig has more than enough confidence to take on the world.  He often achieves what he wants through bullying other rabbits, both physically and verbally.  However, over the course of the journey, a change is gradually wrought in Bigwig.  First of all, he learns that everyone is valuable, even the “weak”.  Each rabbit in the group contributes something, be it leadership, speed, wit, prophecy, optimism, loyalty, or story-telling abilities, and they learn that they must stick together, pooling all these qualities in order to survive.  After many experiences, he becomes a humble rabbit who cares for those who are worse off then him.  He learns the importance of befriending the helpless, and the principle found in Eccl. 11:1-2 which says, “Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again…” is demonstrated multiple times in the story.  Bigwig goes from the mentality of  “everyone for himself” to being willing to give his life in the effort to save the lives of the other rabbits. 

The book of Ecclesiastes accounts the lessons learned by a certain teacher over the course of his life, most likely gathered from various experiences.  Over the course of the teacher’s reflections, two counsels appear repeatedly:  to live one’s live to the fullest, doing everything to one’s best ability (Eccl. 9:10) and to be content with what you have been given (Eccl. 2:24, 9:9).  Interestingly, the rabbits in Watership Down  seem to live by these two principles.  They never do anything halfway, and they never complain to their god.  They accept their lot in life and do the best with what they have.  They do give their god credit for helping them, but never blamed him when the future looked hopeless.