discerning lifestyles

someone once told me, you cannot fathom what someone's been through because you do not lead his life. while this is true, and there can be no precise replication of a life's events, there has to be enough sampling of either a finite or infinite set of 'group events' (this is my failed application of group theory) to warrant use of the word 'empathy'.

and while i believe this, when people say they offer advice, i like to think of this in terms of 'opinion' rather than 'been there, done that'. in effect, this is saying nothing new - when someone approaches you having been in your situation, they are not relaying their (unbiased) observation, or perception of the event. indeed, this would be inhuman, and not what one would expect. instead, what you hear is an interpretation of the event. full of opinions, judgment calls, bias etc. and obviously this follows through into fallacies and untruths, though what portion of a story is full of this, depends on various factors. nonetheless, the (given) gist of this paragraph is that, again, it's not 100% a re-telling of purely the events.

and, although we all know this, sometimes, if not most times, i think it falls into decay from our fleeting memories, as we proceed to tell someone:

'when i was your age...'

or something to that effect (personally, my favourite quote is 'yeah, when i did that...'). now, i must go home and actually regain what lost touches i have of this insightful thought, and hold someone accountable for the use of such phrases (even if it may be myself) as: 'what are you doing with your life?' - something i ask myself and then decline to even ponder, on a daily basis.