Do you value experience?

I'm sitting in the jury assembly room in the beautiful (not sarcastic) Seattle Municipal Court building downtown. The waiting continues as many eager jurors once deep in magazines have turned to staring into space. Care to see?

Yesterday I got to thinking about this article that ran in the Times discussing the resurgence of philosophy as an undergraduate major. The article professes philosophy's value in forming the compass we use to view and act in the world (it reminded me of an Ayn Rand speech, "Philosophy: Who Needs It?"). Having spent a while contemplating how I view the world and my role in it, I got to wondering in what ways my philosophy affects my daily life.

I got through a list of ways: morality, virtues, ethics, etc. The one at which I arrived almost immediately, however, was experience or, in jargon, empiricism. Wikipedia defines and contrasts empiricism like so:

Rather, according to the empiricist view, for any knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced, it is to be gained ultimately from one's sense-based experience.^[2] As a historical matter, philosophical empiricism is commonly contrasted with the philosophical school of thought known as "rationalism" which, in very broad terms, asserts that much knowledge is attributable to reason independently of the senses.

I believe that continually stretching and expanding the sphere that contains our experiences is among the most virtuous of efforts possible. More new experiences, better Jeff. New experiences can be good ones, bad ones, whatever. They just have to be new.

I value new experiences so highly that, since early 2004, I've kept lists of new experiences I had during that year. My lists are pages and pages long--typically 1-2 pages of single-spaced flowing sentences for each year (not bulleted or numbered lists). The top of the page for this year, like all years past, reads, "What did I do in 2008 that I had not done prior?" They include cities, countries or continents visited, notable people I've seen or met, hikes completed, mountains summited, notable restaurants I've visited, new cultural events I've attended. You get the picture. I started these lists only recording exciting and "good" experiences but recently have expanded to include disappointing or frustrating experiences (realizing that these contribute to my character as much if not more than "favorable" experiences). One day I'll be able to pass this list on to children and say, "here are the experiences that formed my character."

Keeping this list has really changed the way I live on a daily basis as I look for new and different experiences to, essentially, add to the list. Is that virtuous? For me, it is. Only you can select what you deem virtuous.