In 2019, I had the most spectacular snorkeling adventure on a day trip to Coiba Island, off the Pacific coast of Panama.
The crystal clear blue waters and white sandy beaches were untouched. The fish were amazing. Nature’s variety was on full display under the water.
It was an awe-inspiring experience.
No snorkeling experience will ever compare to that day.
Even if I went back to the same place, with the same people.
There’s no guarantee that the same fish will show up, that the weather will be those conditions. And even if everything in nature was the same, the people and the dynamics would be different.
You can’t recreate an experience.
Just the fact that you’ve already had an experience of something once by nature makes the next similar experience different.
By the very nature of having had the experience of something, you naturally will compare the second time to the first.
Some would say that this is the suffering of comparison.
But this obscures the point.
It’s the mind’s nature to compare.
Comparison is built into our mind’s systems: it’s how we categorize experiences, how the brain tries to determine what it should expect, as a way to keep itself safe.
The suffering comes when we try to control an experience or recreate a previous experience.
All we can have is the current experience.
We can’t go backwards.
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