I've been thinking about a special category of lesson - one which you cannot discover without experiencing it firsthand. There is a certain subset of advice that for some reason, we'll refuse to learn through instruction.
No matter how arduous or costly or effortful it is going to be for us to find out for ourselves, we prefer to disregard the mountains of warnings from our elders, songs, literature, historical catastrophes, public scandals and instead think some version of "yeah that might be true for THEM, but not for ME."
We decide to learn hard lessons the hard way over and over again. Unfortunately they all seem to be "the big things" too. It's never insights about how to put up level shelves or charmingly introduce yourself at a cocktail party.
Instead, we spend most of our lives learning firsthand the most important lessons that the previous generation already warned us about. Things like:
Even reading this list back, I'm rolling my eyes at how fucking trite it is. These are all basic bitch obvious insights that everybody has heard before. But if they're so basic, why does everyone so reliably fall prey to them throughout our lives?
Even more than that - for every one of these, if I think a bit deeper, I can recall a time (including right now) where I convinced myself that I'm the exception to the rule. That my particular mental makeup, or life situation, or historical wounds, or dreams for the future render me immune to these lessons being applicable.
No no, MY unique inner landscape WOULD be fixed by skirting around the most well-known wisdom of the ages. No no, I CAN thread this needle properly, watch me dance through this minefield and avoid all the trip wires that everyone else kicks. And then you kick one.
"And you will then share a knowing look, the kind that can only occur between two people who have been hurt in exactly the same way" ~ Adam Mastroianni
And a voice in the back of your mind will say "I told you so."