Week 12 Homework

2. On the blog, answer the following question in a 200-300 word essay:

Some people believe that the best way of learning about life is by listening to the advice of family or friends while others believe that the best way of learning about life is through personal experience. I believe that listening to the advice of family or friends is preferable to relying on personal experience.

There are pros and cons for both. Personal experience is very important in our lives. Like a famous saying, “One picture is worth a thousand words,” we often realize that experiencing is the surest way of knowing something. In Korea, however, there is another saying that has totally different meaning: “The frog in the well.” Life is such an enormous concept. Since we are mortal beings, we cannot experience everything on our own. Thus, if we only rely on what we have ever experienced, we would never know about life.

In this point, listening to the advice of family or friends or anyone else who is trustworthy greatly helps us know about life. For example, we can't experience the death, which is an important, mysterious part of life, but we can still get closer to it by listening to advice. Some people might argue that it cannot help us because listening advice is indirect but those advice came from others’ experiences, too. All we need to avoid carefully is listening to a variety of advice and stopping there arrogantly, thinking we already know everything. If only we can avoid this ridiculous error, I believe that listening to advice will give us abundant life lessons than merely relying on personal experience.