Experience Is A Lie

When I was a teenager, the idea of “experience” was aggressively pushed onto me. The only way I could grow up and enjoy life, I was taught, was to get a lot of experience. It would make me a mature, responsible adult. I went on to rack up a lifetimes’ worth of experience all around the world, and now that I look back at it all, I see that it was a waste.

In 2007, I backpacked for six months through South America. I started in Ecuador and snaked my way through half of the continent, eventually en...