I find this question perplexing.

You don’t really understand anything until you experience it.

I am an immigrant. I was born in one country, left, and now live in another. If you haven’t left your country to go live somewhere else, you simply don’t know what it’s like.

I watched many, many movies – even documentaries! – where people get mugged. When someone put a gun to my head I realized I had no idea how having a gun to your head feels, not until it happened to me. The world stops. You are violently living in the present. At other times you might “practice mindfulness”, but you have not experienced everything ceasing to exist until you feel cold metal pushing against your temple and see terror in the eyes of the person holding the gun.

My beautiful superhero of a dad was sick for two years. For those two years I witnessed his health deteriorate and felt as he was dying that I could anticipate what it would be like to lose a parent. Until he died, until I saw his still warm body wrapped and taken away, I had no idea.

I speak multiple languages. I cringe when I see a poem translated from a language that I speak to another that I also speak. Translations – even by world renowned translators – inevitably fall short. I am very happy people have a chance to experience poetry in other languages, but it’s just a shadow of the original. If you don’t speak Spanish, you don’t understand Borges.

I once read that one of worst things that happen to homeless people is that they feel invisible because no one ever looks into their eyes. I have never been homeless. It would change the way I perceive the world.

I’m not black. I cannot fathom the experience of being racially profiled. It angers me to imagine it, and that is not the same.

I have never had a one night stand. I have never had twins. I have never been to war. I have never been a mother. I have never walked on the moon. I have never had cancer. I have never kissed a woman. I have never engaged in group sex. I have never been obese. I have never done drugs. I have never battled addiction or experienced withdrawal.

I have never felt unloved.

This is the single most important gift Quora provides to the world. People here have experienced things I never will and they write about them first hand.

The only way to change the world is to understand it, and only through someone who has actually experienced something can we ever come close to walking in their shoes.

Being homeless.

Being poor.

Starving.

Being alone.

Being non-religious.

Feeling empathy for others.

Being gay.

Being a freelancer.

Being free.

Being loved.

Being needed.

Being forgotten.

Having a terminal illness.

Being parents to someone with a terminal illness.

Losing someone you love to a terminal illness.

Being unaccepted by your parents.

Being a parent.

Being always 100% honest with everyone.

Looking at the world as it is and not as you are.

Being a slave.

Being used.

True failure.

True heartbreak.

Not fitting in.

Working a job you truly hate.

Realizing you reached the end of your life.

Moving to another country or town and starting over.

Depression.

Taking an acid.

Making love vs having sex.

Having kidney stones.

Giving birth.

Depression.

Leaving an addiction to heavy drugs.

Having Tinnitus.

Being onstage in front of a crowd.

Sleep paralysis

Having a bad stutter.

Racism

A dog`s love.

Being evicted from your home.

Travelling solo.

Being discriminated.

Hanging from a parachute.

Listening to Wagner for a long time without getting the urge to conquer the world or a country.

Etc.

Electrocution.

We all have seen in the movies the jittery movement, teeth clenching, hair standing on end, and whatnot. It is funny. Until it is you.

I have only been electrocuted once, despite having often done repairs on live circuits. Sometimes you live in places where you have no access to the fuse panel or circuit breaker, and the landlord doesn't repair anything. So you take your chances.

The one that got me was not a repair. It was a frayed power cord on an old refrigerator, which was parked under the stairs in our basement apartment. We lived 2 blocks from the Mississippi River in 1993. I was woken up around 2 AM by father, who was standing in 2 inches of water. He told me unplug everything electrical while he gathered essential items. I went and shut off every breaker except the lights, and got to work. The last thing I had to unplug was the fridge. I had held off because it would block my access to the back rooms if I pulled it out, and would block my father from getting out. Once he was up front again, I pulled the fridge out and went to unplug it. I was standing in about 6 inches of water at this point, but what did I care? Everything was shut off. I climbed in behind the fridge and grabbed the plug.

Always be certain when it comes to electricity. Turns out the outlet under the stairs was actually part of one of the main floor circuits. I got amazingly lucky. That is to say, the current did not pass through my heart from my left arm to the rising water. My bare shoulder was touching the intake pipes to the shower.

Now, for the most part, movies have it fairly accurate. You don't flash yellow. Your bones don't show through your skin. But the stuff mentioned earlier is pretty much correct.

What it leaves out is the sensation that your bones are going to break. The sound of your teeth cracking. The feeling that your muscles are being barbecued inside your boiling skin. The fact that you can't breathe or scream or whimper. The knowledge that you are paralyzed, and that you are aware that, if you are not freed by someone else, you could be permanently damaged or die. The sound of your blood rushing, and the hum of the current in your head. The fact that hum never really goes away after that.

My dad found me, saw what was happening, and hit me in the chest with a large cutting board. The plug and I fell away from the wall. We went to a motel for a few days. It took 6 days before the redness of my skin faded along with the pain. It took 2 before my left arm moved under my power. It would twitch and spasm at random for the next few months. 26 years later, my left hand still does sometimes. My fingertips on that hand are almost brick red around the nails. And that hellish humming is still there.

So be careful with electricity. Seriously. Never ever take chances with it. Find the electrical blueprints (schematics) for where you live. Keep them in your toolbox. If you need to work on wires, and don't have an independent source of light, use them. Better yet, pay an electrician to do it. Give them the blueprints. Keep your wiring up to code if you can. If a cord is frayed, or an outlet is loose, get it fixed as soon as possible.

If I ever get the chance, I will explain how suffocation feels to y'all.

There is always someone around you who is facing worse situations than you.

This is the learning that I always remember in all the situations.

There had been an experiment,

In which 12 people were brought in one room and were told to share their own sorrows and troubles. And after all have done that,

• Either you can take your sorrows and run away
• Or you can exchange your troubles with someone else and live that life instead of their own

Everyone was happy to participate and when interviewed regarding what choice they will go with:

Before the exercise started: They told that obviously they will exchange as their own life is in the worst possible situation that ever can be.

And then the experiment started. Everyone started telling in depth regarding what they feel and what they have gone through.

It went for hours. Once the last person had spoken,

Surprisingly, everyone just stood up and left with the issues that they already had.

Till the point one didn't know other person's life, one felt that his life is the worst. The moment one knows about other side, he feels privileged to be in the situation he is. BECAUSE, your issues are there with you only because you are capable of handling them.

Stop crying, comparing and contrasting. Just live life to its fullest.

-Parth Shah (Arjuna@War)

A person who loves you will never stop believing in you no matter how har the situations are .

So i think if you want to believe in one thing in your life it might be your parents as they will never stop loving you .Other things include ourself we can believe on ourself as we love ourself for sure. But i think parents are only other than you due to following reasons:

1. They are always ready to catch you when you fall.

Whether it was when I was learning how to ride a bike, applying for a job then getting rejected, or helping me mend my broken heart, they have put me back together more times than I can count. Every time I trip, they are the helping hand that holds me up.

2. They have given you one of the best things you could ever have: life and love.

Not only did they give you life and bring you into this wonderful world, but they loved for you and cared for you for all the years of your life. They are the people that have fed you, bathed you, and clothed you. They have kept a roof over your head and food in your mouth. they have cared for you as only a mother and father can care for their child. And they constantly remind you of the love that they have for you, whether it be a simple good morning text or a phone call to ask how your day is going. This is the greatest gift, life and love.

3. They have taught you the most important lessons in life.

Even though we don't like to admit it, our parents teach us more life lessons then we ever realize. When they tell us not to do something and we proceed to do it anyway and it turns out the worst way possible; we realize that they know far more than us and only wish that someday we have that much wisdom and knowledge when we become parents of our own.

4. They always give the best advice and know the right thing to say.

When you are down in the dumps or find yourself in a predicament, your parents are there with words of wisdom to help you get out of that sticky situation. Their words speak to us. They know how to make us feel better and guide us in the right direction.

5. They are the reminder of the love that is all around you even when you feel alone.

Being away from home for long periods of time can be a hard thing to do, especially if you are extremely family oriented as I am. This time away can make you feel alone, but mom and dad are always there to remind us of the love they have for us and how they miss us as we miss them.

6. They have a diagnosis for all your medical needs.

What are moms and dads for if it not for the those late night phone calls when you are sick and need to know if you should go to the health center or not. They are our own personal doctors who know us better than we know ourselves.

7. They are your biggest cheerleader.

No matter how many things you have tried throughout your life whether it be playing the violin, running track, or being in the school play; they were the ones to drive to every practice, cheer you on at every game, and be there to tell you just how proud of you they are. They are your biggest supporters and the people that will encourage you to follow your dreams no matter how many times you change your major or path of life.

8. They are home.

Some say, your home is where your heart is. My heart belongs to my family. They are my home wherever they go and no matter how far apart life takes us, they will always be home to me.

9. They have taught you what hard work and sacrifice look like.

Being older, I have learned to appreciate and see all the sacrifices that have been made for me and my siblings and continue to be made every day. Hearing stories of their struggles to make a home and start a family have helped me see what they had to relinquish to get to where they are now. They have created a lot for themselves and our family. They have taught me that sacrifice and hard work is something that must be done for those you love.

10. They are your best friends.

They are the ones I can joke with and tell anything to. They are always there for me in times of need and in times of prosperity, for celebration and despair. They will always be the most amazing individuals and I will forever look up to them. I respect and love them for all they do and admire them every day.

I have realized that my parents think of me before they think of themselves. They think of my life and what I have to offer. They think of my siblings and how they will grow into amazing individuals. But they don't think of how amazing they are. They don't realize that while they were just winging this parenting thing, they were being our superheroes. They don't realize that they are our leaders and our trend setters. They don't see that in our fragile young eyes, they are the ones we want to be one day when we grow up. I hope they realize that as we grow in our lives, we grow closer to them instead of farther away. Distance makes the heart grow fonder. It makes us college kids realize how amazing our parents really are.

Life as a citizen of a third world country. I'm not talking about an American with $10k in the bank and a college education who spends a year backpacking through Thailand. I'm talking about having little to no access to anything beyond a pre-K education, having little to no access to a consistent source of clean food, water, or medicine, and having little to no prospect of getting a job as an uneducated, malnourished blip on the UN's radar (something north of 3Billion people live this way). I was born into one of the most wealthy areas in the world during a time of great prosperity into an industry of constant innovation. But the dice rolls a different way and I'm riding around town with a goat on my back. I know of this alternate reality, but will never really know it.

From as young as I remember, I was taught that I could only expect to have a small number of people I could count as true friends, the kind who would drop everything and be there for you if you really needed them.

As a little kid, I had no concept of this. I thought that people had lots and lots of friends…that you could count most people you met as friends.

As I grew older, I began to differentiate friends from acquaintances. Just like everyone else, people who I thought were my friends disappointed me and were just as happy to lose my friendship as they were to have it.

When I joined the military, I learned the true meaning of friendship, no, brotherhood. A brother will fight harder to save your life than to preserve his own.

No one is asked to do this; it is the purest form of altruism.

Space travel.

As a young kid I was obsessed with many things, but Soace Travel was one of my favourites. I recall one book I had which predicted that now we have put a man on the moon we will be putting someone on Mars by 2020 and out to the moons of the outer planets a decade or two after that.

They clearly hadn't taken into account the Bean Counters’ influence on things, huge budget cuts for NASA and so forth have seriously messed up these projections.

So, my dream of being on the first (or indeed any) manned trip to Mars have had to take a back seat.

I can think of to things:

1. Belief in your product or vision - this is easier, talk to a bunch of people and see what they think. I have a group of about 20 people who I run ideas past. It’s not a perfect approach, but it’s cheap and based on the percentage of Wow, great idea to How stupid is that, I either get support for my belief or not.
2. Belief in yourself - this is much harder. Many of us worry too much about what other people think, do we have the ability or talent to create our dreams. Mostly, you need to take small positive steps until even you can argue that the vision is going to happen. I do not mean self deception or fake it till you make it. You keep doing things that show you what works and what doesn’t these will help you focus on what needs to be done and your belief will be based on results not on wishful thinking.

Go for it!

Well there are many, my instincts always beware me. But I'm actually like a Simba who needs shaman and guide Rafiki to open up mind, eyes and ears.

• When you break someone, you actually not just break that person for that moment but also give lifelong scars. Be kind.
• If somebody likes you, you'll know it and won't get anxious. If they don't, you remain jumbled and feel chaos. Understand the pattern.
• If you want to start something, start with whatever you have in hand. Don't overthink to collect all at once. Things fall in place gradually.
• If a person is ghosting you, understand that person is dead. Move on.

• We are not afraid of failures but what others will say. The day you'll die, only your closed ones will mourn for few days and then everybody moves on. Don't seek approval from others.
• Invest in relation. But that doesn't imply that you have to be with toxic creature or narcissist.
• A person with 1000 pages of ruined past/ complain and 10 pages of optimism will suck the hell out of you. Indeed past doesn't matter but it tells a lot about you and your actions.

GIF Source: Google

Everything. You can read every assembly instruction that comes with the bookshelves you purchased, “understand” them fully, and, yet, you won’t really understand them until you put the shelves together. This is because we experience in multiple sensory dimensions. Instructions can only capture a few of them. Yes, they can tell you that a particular screw will require some force to tighten, but what does “some force” mean? Only the feedback your brain gets from your muscles can tell you for sure.

When I was a young programmer, I thought I could learn programming languages just from reading books. I’d buy a book about C++, and read it cover to cover, “understanding” everything. And though I put “understanding” in quotes, I really did understand all the concepts intellectually. And, I thought, what is there to programming besides intellectual work? Nothing, right?

Well, there’s something. It’s intangible, but it exists, because when I actually sat down and started typing, I stumbled. Yes, some of this was just relative inexperience with the ideas, but some of it was not yet having the language in my muscle memory. There’s an aspect of programming—one rarely talked about—that’s “athletic.” It involves learning finger skills. And those skills don’t stand alone. They need to connect mentally with the intellectual knowledge for understanding to be complete.

There’s a famous philosophical thought experiment sometimes called “Mary the Color Scientist.” It’s used to illustrate something a little different from what we’re talking about here, but I’ll put it into service:

Mary is an albino woman who has lived her entire life in a room with white walls and no windows. There are no mirrors in it, so she’s never seen her face. She can only see her body which is practically as white as the walls are. All the furniture in her room is black and white. Captors keep her locked in the room, but, once a day, a man dressed head to foot in black enters and brings her food and water. The food is in the form of black nutrient pills.

Mary has a computer with a black-and-white monitor. It’s connected to the Internet and so she’s been able to attend online University and get a degree. In fact, she has multiple PHDs in fields like neuroscience and optics. Over time, she’s become the world’s leading expert in color. She’s read everything there is to know about the subject and has published original papers on it. She understand all the neural pathways involved in color perception. She understand pigments. She understands how light interacts with the objects we see…

Then, one day, the man in black enters and puts a single red rose down on the table next to Mary’s computer. She is utterly amazed.

But what new information does she have now that she didn’t have before? What fact could she now tell you about the redness she’s seeing that she couldn’t tell you before? None. And yet she had to experience redness in order to understand it.

Back in ’03, I was a hardnosed, opinionated, rightwing, lousy listener. I'd attended a church service and was doing the hang-out-afterwards coffee thing, and someone handed me a clipboard& petition to sign; I signed them all the time. For whatever reason, this time I read it carefully. If the petitioners were successful, there'd be a law allowing employers to fire an employee if they found out they were gay. Somehow, call it an epiphany, the injustice of such a thing really hit me. I said to the clipboard person: ‘This would mean I would have more rights than my gay neighbour. Am I really supposed to want that?’ He shrugged and looked uncomfortable. I felt a feeling wash over me, a knowing, a realization that for years I'd been on the wrong side! It was enlightening, it was horrifying, it was liberating. Then I said, louder this time so nearby people turned heads, ‘If the proverbial adulterous woman had been a gay man, you're saying Jesus would've thrown rocks?!’ The poor clipboard guy.

After that, all sorts of dominos began to fall for me. Believing abortion was wrong and murder? Changed my mind in favour of compassion for women (&bible says zip about it even though it was well-known practice, which is very notable). Thinking all the men from India treat their wives crappily and make them walk five paces behind? Met a man so in love with his wife of 40years he couldn't praise her enough….boom, another prejudice gone. Since that day in the church basement when I discovered that while being sure you're right you can be very wrong, I've been willing to reexamine my own position, and correct my views according to facts, and open my mind, and change my mind, have my mind changed (rather than just be wrong louder). It was only hard for the first 2 minutes, then floodgates opened and I've embraced the correction of errors rather than clinging to them. Holding to rigid positions and refusing to actually rethink anything is how we become old and intractable, unteachable, and how we stay wrong.

And now, it's easy to admit, to learn, to grow wiser instead of bragging that I'm already wise and never need correction. And yes, totally worth it.

At age 15, I fell madly in love with a 19 yr old college student. She and her family lived next door to my best friend. I was born with an exceptional memory and above average mental discipline. The year was 1965.

From consulting with the female members of my extended family, I learned what women like and don’t like. For 13 months, I applied everything that I had learned. I reinvented myself: How I talk, dress, and my hygiene.

I became the person, that I believed she would fall in love with. I didn’t talk about myself, unless questioned. Making her laugh was my greatest joy in life.

About once a month or so, when everything seemed right, I would slowly move in to kiss her. On twelve occasions, she would turn her head, and I would pull back, and we’d continue as if it never happened.

On the thirteenth, she didn’t turn head. Stunned and confused, I stopped. She kissed me. It would lead to the biggest boost to my ego, in my entire life. Okay, the sex was fantastic. However, I knew her best friend was Penny. But I didn’t know, that Penny had been named the head cheerleader for their college. Nor did I expect, that my beautiful Rebecca would want to show me off.

The affair lasted 3 months. My parents were fine with it.

Every Friday, we went to the college dance. Every Saturday, we went to the college football game, and the lavish parties afterwards.

Yes, I drank nearly as much as everyone. However, I couldn’t make a fool of myself. It was extremely important, that I be accepted. Plus, everything I knew about college parties, I got from the movies. Therefore, I had to be prepared to fight off any overly fresh male.

The experience taught me, that to succeed, I need to be patient, persistent, and to reinvent myself, to whatever degree, necessary.

It was also my first time, outside of my family and friends, to closely observe human behavior.

Following this pattern, I was able to succeed in several aspects of my life. However, after that first success, I always anticipated succeeding. No matter how large my ego became, it couldn’t compete with that first major boost to my ego, because it was so unexpected.

I learned that sometimes things won’t turn out the way I planned, no matter how hard I tried, but then better things come along in their place.

I used to think, that giving the best effort can make wishes come true.

That was a long time ago, way, way, way back.

Then I learned that interpersonal dynamics don’t work according to that formula. That ‘’the other person’’ sometimes just doesn’t care, or won’t show the same amount of effort, or can never be satisfied no matter what. And then things fall apart.

And then I learned that that’s ok, because better things come along later on. Even though sometimes it takes months or years to understand that the ‘’fall out’’ was really a blessing in disguise.

This applies not only to people, but also to unfortunate events in one’s life, like some medical misfortune. Now, those really take years to realize that the timing was just right (although when the misfortune happens, the timing seems nothing short of disastrous!), or/and the kind of challenge.

So whatever you’re going through, I wish you that you’ll see the silver lining of it sooner than later. And believe me, when you get to that realization, you’ll want to dance for joy.

I had heard ghost stories before. Some I believed, some I did not. Then, when I lived in Thailand, I had my own ghost encounter. It was attached to my Thai girlfriend. She often told me about what she termed her “angel.” I was not sure what to think. Then, one night when I returned to my one-room apartment, the “angel” was waiting for me. He appeared as a 5-foot-tall oval shadow. I am not psychic, but I could sense the spirit was male. He was also telling me through telepathy that he wanted me dead. To make a long story short, I opened my Bible, prayed, and the villainous specter evacuated the premises immediately.

The moment when time stops and there is nothingness and only awareness of everything exists at that moment infinitely in your pure consciousness or samadhi then you realised all things exist for that moment only and if we don’t appreciate it then it will go away forever. Live the moments especially the people around you because we influenced them. The work we do and the experiences we accumulated are linked to the next level even small acts of kindness.

Don’t let your monkey mind chatter in your head and confused you even more distract you the important moments that just going away like the tide that come and go which wait for no man.

I am a native of Kansas City and had taken a new job in September of 1996. In fact, about 25 of us from all over the world were hired at the same time and put through a 12 week training course. We all became more or less friends. At the end of the training we were all dispersed to various departments in the company. In January I ran into one of my cohort. He had come to Kansas City from Houston, TX. Kansas City has a temperate climate which frequently and regularly falls far below 0C in the winter. Houston is a much warmer city. I asked my friend how he was doing, thinking he would discuss his assignments. He looked me in the eye and said with utter seriousness, “All my life I heard that water freezes at 32 degrees [Fahrenheit, 0C]. I never really believed that until I walked out one morning after it had rained the night before and found ice everywhere on the ground.”

That prepared me for a similar occurrence some 20 years later. We had hired someone from Los Angeles to work in Maryland. He had driven across the US in January to start his new job. He was in awe when he explained to me that he had seen icicles coming out of rocks along his journey. I explained that those were tiny springs that flowed all year long, barely dripping out of the rocks but in the winter they froze in place. It seemed impossible to him even after he had seen them.