Experience is the essential and paramount source of knowledge when learning in everyday life, whereas books provide specific

knowledge on a certain aspect of life. The words The only source of knowledge is experience, spoken by a man many regard as one of historys greatest thinkers, Albert Einstein, calls into question the importance of learning from experience rather than gaining knowledge from books. Many individuals argue over what is more important. I believe that the two exist together, though one does indeed follow the other, as experience can create knowledge, and books cannot. Books can only relay knowledge. Consider a young child learning to swim. According to iVillage articles, many agree that the best method is to place your toddler in a pool of water and let the little one become accustomed to it. In my research, I was unable to find a reference in favour of giving a child a book advising them how to swim. When reading the Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Lyman Frank Baum, we find that children need to learn these things through experience as a baby has brains, but it does not know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get (90). In addition to babies and story books, we can look at history, and how the Neanderthals survived solely on instinct and knowledge gained from experience. The Cave Man had no internet access to refer to when they saw fire created from lightning. They could only observe it, and watch as rocks produced sparks when colliding with other rocks. They practiced this until they had managed to create fire. (Dr Dig Online 2012) These actions seem to me to be what British poet Samuel Butler wrote in his Note Books: Do not learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world. (66)

Our audiovisual memory is very important in helping us remember things. When reading, we develop a capacity to call to mind information the author is portraying,

but to see it happen, to hear it, to live it through all our senses, makes us experience it on a personal level and gives us a deeper and more vivid knowledge of the lesson. This personal experience knowledge is not a new concept. In The Little Red Book of Wisdom, English poet John Keats described this deeper knowledge in a letter he wrote to his siblings in 1819:

Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced even a proverb is no proverb to you until your life has illustrated it. (113) In 2006, I took an advanced level 3 first aid course. There was a lot of theory and very little practical work. Two years later, a situation came about, which called upon my basic paramedic skills and I had no time to reflect upon the many hours of reading done over the course. To this day, I wonder if I would have been able to save that persons life had we been able to practice CPR for the few hours assigned to it in the course, instead of reading about it and listening to the lecturers accounts. As Leonardo Da Vinci warned in his Thoughts on Arts and Life, I now know to avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience (40). When considering your life, you have two options: You can follow the routes shown in a map, or you can discover your own routes, with the map stored away for reference if needed. In essence, books can show us the different paths to take, yet experience will show us which paths are the right ones. Although books may enrich lessons learnt by experience, I think we should keep in mind that each person is an individual. Why then, should our thoughts and actions be summarised into a few basic words on a page? What is our purpose if everything we need to learn is already document? If that is indeed the case, our existence would become trivial. What is it that drives you to get out of bed each morning and confront the day? For me it is the ever-pressing need for wisdom, the drive to obtain understanding and the fascination of the unfamiliar. Each day affords us the opportunity to experience something new and previously unknown.

Bibliography: Baum, LF. 2008. The Wonderful Wizard of OZ. Forgotten books; www.forgottenbooks.org. Blake. Cobblestone Publishing. Questions about Hominids and Cavemen. http://www.digonsite.com/drdig/earlyman/index.html (01 September 2012). Butler, S. 2006. The Note-Books of Samuel Butler. The Echo Library; Teddington, Middlesex. Calaprice, A. 2011. The Ultimate Quotable Einstein. Princeton University Press; Woodstock, Oxfordshire. Da Vinci, L. Thoughts on Art and Life, The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thoughts on Art and Life. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29904/29904-h/29904-h.htm (31 August 2012). DeMoss, M. 2007, The Little Red Book of Wisdom, Thomas Nelson Inc; Nashville, TN. Stapleton, S. Jump In! How to Teach Kids to Swim at Every Age. http://www.ivillage.com/how-teachkids-swim-age-age/6-b-371134 (31 August 2012).