(I apologize now for the title. It’s a lot of words, but I couldn’t find that little symbol that means “not equal to.”)

Experience sometimes leads to wisdom, but sometimes it doesn’t. I recognize that this isn’t profound, but I am so tired of hearing that experience is the pre-cursor to wisdom and knowledge-both in and out of the workplace-that I wanted to give it some proper attention.

“Nhung, you’re not qualified to give a manager advice or suggestions on how to be a better manager. He or she has been doing in that position for ten years, and quite frankly, you haven’t been a manager in this organization at all so there’s nothing you have to say that the manager cares to hear.” Do you know what that is called?

P-R-I-D-E

I would be a very wealthy woman if I were paid every time I heard that comment or some version of it during the past decade. It conveys a singular message that experience is the ONLY path towards knowledge and wisdom. Experience is wonderful. For many, experience becomes a teaching vessel so that you are wiser and can pass on information to help another individual, but I also know many individuals who experience the same things over and over again because they don’t learn from experience.

The beauty of shared experiences is that it allows great empathy between people. Because I wasn’t a manager by position, I didn’t experience or feel the actual stressors that managers felt. However, that didn’t prevent me from having the knowledge or understanding to help them be more effective in their roles.

I used to teach CPR. Hundreds upon hundreds of times. I used to practice compressions on my husband. (Ummm…don’t try that at home). The participants in class would tell me that if they went into cardiac arrest at work, they’d trust me to perform CPR. Isn’t that odd? I’ve never experienced cardiac arrest and never performed CPR on an individual in cardiac arrest, but the participants would always point to the fact that I taught CPR regularly and was constantly practicing it, which equipped me to speak on the matter. Often coming from the very same managers who touted experience as king.

But it happens outside the workplace, too. I once had a conversation with some moms who couldn’t believe that I let a man deliver my baby. “Nhung, why would you not pick a female doctor? A woman is going to understand another woman’s health so much better than any male doctor. A man is not going to understand what it means to be pregnant or the pain of labor.”

Sigh…

Yes, it’s true. My doctor can talk to me about what Braxton-Hicks contractions feel like all day, but he is never going to truly know what they feel like from personal experience. He’s not going to truly understand the despair a mother feels in those moments when the sonogram reveals that there something very wrong with her baby, the elation a woman feels moments after birth when she realizes that it (the pregnancy) is finally over or the sheer terror when a new mother realizes…uh oh, the pregnancy is over and…gulp…there’s no instruction manual for this new life.

But does that mean he isn’t qualified to help me through this roller coast ride experienced only by women? Absolutely not. I trust him with my life. Literally. Why? Because I know that he has made it his focus to learn and understand all he can. He’s constantly practicing. He’s reading books, attending conventions, talking to other practitioners, etc… for the sole purpose of making sure he is as equipped as he can possibly be to help me through one of the most significant experiences of my life.

So what made me think of all this now? Because during this election season, I hear things like, “This person is more qualified to fix our nations’ problems. He’s experienced it.” Or “That guy can’t possibly understand us. His background and upbringing are too far removed from us so he can’t possibly connect to my daily problems. He can’t know what it means to be a working mother.”

Unless I’m mistaken, neither individuals have experienced motherhood, whether it’s the experience of being a working mother, single mother, stay-at-home mother, etc… But I don’t preclude either men from being qualified to address issues of motherhood due to their lack of experience as one. I entered this country as an immigrant and grew up on welfare…but I’m not inherently more qualified to solve the nation’s issues regarding immigration or government assistance programs because of my experience.

Experience sometimes leads to wisdom, but sometimes it doesn’t. Looking forward can be beneficial, but so can looking back. It’s a balance.