On Lived Experience vs. "Learned Experience"
I had a professor used this super interesting metaphor to talk about lived experience versus "learned experience" and I still think about to this day.
He said a cancer patient is an expert in knowing what it's like to have cancer. They can tell you all about how it feels and how it affects their lives day to day. They can provide a really vivid and nuanced account of their symptoms because it is quite literally happening to them. (Lived experience.)
But cancer patients don't go to other cancer patients to learn about the disease on a scientific level or to get medical care. That stuff comes from doctors—people who have have been trained to understand and treat it. ("Learned experience.")
Meanwhile, doctors need to listen to patients in order to effectively treat them and continue to improve treatment plans over time.
The point is they need each other's perspectives/knowledge in order for anything to work.
But I think we have a tendency in some spaces to give too much weight to one perspective or the other: lived experience versus "learned experience."
Sometimes we're quick to silence people because "It's not your place to speak if you're not in this group or if you haven't had this experience!"
And other times the opposite happens: "Listen to me instead of people in this group/living this experience because unlike them, I have many degrees on this topic."
I think we can all do better at recognizing the value in both of those perspectives.
There's so much knowledge that comes from experiencing something firsthand, but there's also a lot of insight that comes through formal study/training.
The magic happens when those two views combine.
