Montaigne “Of Experience”

In his excerpt Of Experience from his Essais, Montaigne argues that through self-exploration we are able to “arrive at some tentative conclusions about [our] own nature” (183), with which we gain self-acceptance and learn to embrace our life the way it is (cf. 183). This statement implies that if we discover who we are, we can learn to accept ourselves and our life. I agree with this concept because I think that we can only know who we are if we take the effort to find out what defines our character.

However, I also agree that we can never truly know who we are because we are constantly evolving. New situations reveal new sides of ourselves that we didn’t know we had before. Before I went to university, I never thought that I would be able to live alone in a big city. But then I managed to live alone, and I discovered that I like living alone and having my own space. Similarly, I thought I would never be able to fly alone. But when I flew to the US this summer, I discovered that flying alone is not a big deal and now I know, if I ever have to fly alone again, I know what to do and I won’t get stressed out about it. I think that through experiencing new situations we find out what we are actually capable of and we are more open to try new things. We can also change our life if we are not happy with the way it is right now.

All in all, I think that experiencing new things helps us become more confident and self-aware and overall helps us to create the life that we want (or didn’t know we wanted) for ourselves.