"Experience is a brutal teacher."

When I first saw the film Shadowlands I was profoundly impacted by something that C.S. Lewis, played by Anthony Hopkins, said after passing through an extremely difficult and painful event in his life. He said, "Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn...you learn." This short line from a really great movie has stuck with me for a long time. It often resurfaces in my mind from the depths of my daily existence like a great whale, blasting a hole in the seemingly endless waves of fear, selfishness, and ingratitude that frequently fill my soul in times of adversity. Each time it surfaces to draw another deep breath, it reminds me that other places exist beyond the current, bleak view from the crow's nest of my little vessel. It reminds me that I have a destination, a New World, that will someday appear on the horizon, if I will just trust my heading and keep a steady hand to the helm.

There is something inherent in experience that gives it a power beyond other forms of learning. We often try to learn by observation, by reason, by study, or by other means, but they all pale in comparison to experience in terms of how quickly you learn and how deeply the lesson is impressed into your mind and heart. You can read about touching a hot stove, you can reason through why it might be a bad idea, and you can even watch someone else touch the stove, but nothing will teach you that lesson like getting burned. That experience can then be applied to other situations with hot objects, effectively accelerating your learning process exponentially. Experience is in large measure the reason we are here. Learning about mortality and the challenges of choosing righteousness in the midst of that mortality was something that we could only do to a limited extent in pre-mortal life. Here we are to learn by our own experience the good from the evil and to prize and choose the good.

Alma taught that if you try "an experiment upon [the word]," the experience you gain from seeing the word "enlarge [your] soul" will give you confidence that the next gospel principle that you put to the test will also enlarge your soul (Alma 32). Shiblon, because of his experience, knew "that the Lord did deliver" him (Alma 38:4). The Lord told Joseph Smith that all of his adversity would "give [him] experience, and shall be for [his] good" (D&C 122:7). Even Jesus, though "the Spirit knoweth all things," had to experience suffering "according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people" (Alma 7:13). And actually experiencing the withdrawal of His Father's Spirit during that suffering surprised Him enough to exclaim in momentary fear "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt 27:47)

Experience really is a brutal teacher, but you learn, in a way that no other form of learning can give you. So, the next time that you feel your little vessel might be swallowed up by the sea, when you cry in your prayers "Master, carest thou not that [I] perish?" (Mark 4:38), please remember that "all these things things shall give thee experience" and in the end "shall be for thy good" (D&C 122:7). Remember that God will not forsake you (Joshua 1:5, Isaiah 49:16), even though you may momentarily fear that He has. Remember that the "mountain waves which [brake] upon [you]" (Ether 6:6) are there so that you "may be taught more perfectly" (D&C 105:10). And always remember that the very winds that create those waves are the same force that will "never cease to blow [you] towards the promised land" (Ether 6:8).

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