I was trying to put a name to this idea for a while and I came up with unteachable lessons it's a special category of lesson one that you can't discover without experiencing it firsthand so there is a certain subset of advice that for some reason we all refuse to learn through instruction no matter how arduous or costly or effortful it's going to be for us to find out for ourselves we prefer to disregard the mountains of warnings that we get from our elders and songs and literature and historical catastrophes and public scandals and instead we
think some version of yeah that might be true for them but not for me we decide to learn the hard lessons the hard way over and over again and unfortunately they all seem to be the big things too it's never insights about how to put a level shelves or charmingly introduce yourself at a cocktail party instead we spend most of our Lives learning firsthand the most important lessons that the previous generation already warned us about things like money won't make you happy or fame won't fix your selfworth or you don't love that pretty girl she's
just hot and difficult to get or nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it uh you will regret working too much worrying isn't improving your performance all of your fears are a waste of time you should see your parents more you'll be fine after the breakup and you'll be grateful that you did it uh it's perfectly okay to cut toxic people out of your life and even listening to that list back I find myself sort of rolling my eyes at how trite it is because they are all basic obvious
insights that everybody has heard before but if they're so basic why does everybody so reliably fall prey to them consistently throughout our lives and if they're so obvious why do people who have recently become famous or wealthy or lost a parent or gone through a breakup start to Proclaim those facts with the sort of renewed grandio ceremony of someone who's just gone through religious re it's strange that stuff everybody kind of accepts as being true we all are surprised about when it happens to us and the other thing is it is a very contentious list
of points to say on the internet so if I have an interview with a billionaire who says that all of his money didn't make him happy or a movie star who says that her Fame felt like a prison uh the internet quite reliably will tear them apart for being ungrateful and out of touch don't you know that there's people that are struggling oh my God how toned deaf could you be uh so not only do we refuse to learn the lessons we even refuse to hear the message from the people warning us about them and
even more than that for every single one of those lessons if I think a little bit deeper I can probably recall a time including right now where I convinced myself that I was the exception to the rule that my particular mental makeup or life situation or historical wounds or dreams for the future render me immune to these lessons being applicable no no no no my unique inner landscape would be fixed by skirting around some of the most well-known wisdom of the ages it's like no no no no I can read this needle properly Watch Me
dance through this Minefield and avoid all of the trip wires that everyone else has kicked and then you kick one and you then share a sort of knowing luck with someone else who also learned one of these unteachable lessons and it's the kind of luck that can only occur between two people who have been hurt in the exact same way and a little voice in the back of your mind will say I Told You So and these unteachable lessons I guess play into a broader idea of the certain areas of life that you just can't
expedite I I wonder whether it's because it's so alluring you know Fame uh sexiness adoration money uh the distraction of doing something that isn't seeing your parents and forgetting how sort of time moves and that one day they're going to be gone a lot of those lists uh that list of of questions and points all play on things that we really really want stuff that feels urgent that gets in the way of things that are maybe more important and um you will reliably kick the trip wise of many of those throughout your life and I
get the sense that this is a unique category of lesson that just comes along for the ride as a byproduct of getting older that trying to expedite it trying to get there a bit quicker uh maybe you can do it but there's very few people I know who have been able to say I don't want the pretty girl who's difficult to get I don't want money Fame I don't get distracted from seeing my parents I don't work too much without burning myself out first there's very few people who get to that realization without having being
burned so painfully and maybe that's it as well that the Allure of the success of these things or the distraction away from stuff that's important is so strong that it takes a ridiculously painful event to actually drive the nail into the coffin of whatever this lesson is but yeah uh unteachable lessons I think it's sort of when you see it you can't unse it and um I'm uh watching them pop up everywhere I do think as well uh the sort of audience that listens to Modern wisdom is cool because the nuance and the ability to
sit with this person who's rich is saying that being rich didn't fix their problems that makes me who wants to be richer feel upset which like everybody right everybody wants to be richer than they are and there's only a few people who have said I've reached like you money escape velocity post money life uh but I don't see that so much on the channel anymore which is good and makes me feel uh proud of you so allay well done thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that clip the ful length episode is
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