I had a second meetup, and this time two other women showed up. It was interesting because one woman had a philosophy very similar to mine, and the other had pretty much the opposite. One, like me, believes it's good to reflect on one's experiences and analyse them, and the other feels that it is best to go with the flow, relax, and 'blend in' (to use her words). She heavily implied that analysing got in the way of really living -- whereas I believe that "the unexamined life is not worth living." Not to confuse caution with analysing -- I think the best time to analyse is AFTER you do a thing. I'm a fan of making mistakes, but only making them once (hopefully). I'd rather go with my instinct and make a mess than miss an opportunity. I think you can only be 'too' analytical if you don't immerse yourself in experience because you are too busy looking in from the outside. I definitely immerse myself in experience. and then afterwards I analyse it. like now! ;-)

In school, you don't learn something and then move on -- you learn, review, and move on. If you skip the review, you're not likely to remember, or use what you learned. The way I see it is, our minds are storage places. When you come across new information, it is randomly tossed into the mindspace. By analysing, you take this knowledge and reshape it into a configuration that fits best in your particular mindspace. Only then can you use it to its fullest potential. It can still be used in its original shape, but it cannot be easily built upon.

Another way of putting it is to say that when someone gives you knowledge, it is their knowledge, designed to fit into their mindspace (unless it is regurgitated; then you have no idea whose mindspace it fits, which is a little scary if you think about it!). It only becomes yours when you break it down and reshape it to fit in YOUR mindspace. People can tell me all day long that drinking water is good for me, but it remains their knowledge until I reshape it into mine (in this example, by experiencing the difference between good and poor hydration). Because of this way of thinking, I never take anyone's words to be truth for me -- they may be verrrrrry similar but they will have slight differences that will create instability in my thoughts if I do not first reshape them to fit my mindspace. There's only one side of difference between a rectangle and a pentagon, but they don't fit together in a pattern very easily.