The Cost of Experience

One of the unexpected things about getting older is that you don't just gain experience.

You also lose something.

When I was younger, I believed people.

If someone told me something, I generally assumed it was true. If they offered to help, I assumed they meant it. I didn't spend my time questioning people's motives or wondering whether they were being completely honest. It simply wasn't how I saw the world.

That wasn't because I was naïve. It was because I was inexperienced.

Then life happened.

Not one dramatic event, but the slow accumulation of ordinary experience. Disappointments. Betrayals. People who weren't quite who they appeared to be. Workplaces, colleagues and organisations that didn't always act in the interests of the people they claimed to serve. Redundancies. Manipulation. Injustice. Building a life on what I thought were solid foundations that turned out to be quicksand.

Each experience left a mark until, almost without noticing, the way I saw the world had changed.

Today, if someone makes a promise, a small part of me wonders whether they'll keep it.

If an organisation tells me it's putting people first, I instinctively ask whose interests are really being served.

If something sounds too good to be true, I assume it probably is.

Experience teaches you to look beneath the surface, and I'm grateful for that.

Discernment matters. It protects us from making the same mistakes twice. It helps us recognise manipulation, empty promises and hidden agendas. Those lessons have value.

But every lesson has a cost.

I don't miss being young. I don't miss having less confidence or less understanding of the world. I certainly don't miss making mistakes that could have been avoided.

But I do miss the person I was.

I miss the person who trusted easily. Who expected honesty before deception. Who looked for the good in people before looking for the catch. Who loved without wariness.

I can't unlearn what life has taught me.

But I don’t want experience to quietly harden into cynicism.

Perhaps the challenge isn't choosing between trust and wisdom, but learning to hold on to both.

To remain discerning without becoming suspicious, and to recognise that some people will let us down, without assuming that everyone will.

We spend a great deal of time talking about what experience gives us.

Wisdom.

Perspective.

Resilience.

Discernment.

We spend far less time acknowledging what it quietly takes away.

Sometimes, the cost of experience is that we stop seeing the world through trusting eyes. The challenge is not to stop believing in the good in people.