The Scale of Experience

Our understanding of ourselves is limited by our range of experience, which changes throughout life.

I wrote about this concept 15 years ago in Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?, and want to expand upon it.

The Scalability of Human Experience

Each person develops from birth along a path that’s laid before them by the universe. No one has control over their path in life at any time in their conscious life. No person makes choices that aren’t guided by the experiences they’ve brought with them to that point.

At the time of conception, the human body is a blank slate, but this state only exists for an immeasurably short time. The development of this person from that point is entirely shaped by factors beyond itself. If the mother drinks, smokes, or eats certain things while pregnant, the fetus will be affected. The person is not even conscious yet, and they’re already being molded in ways they can’t control.

me, 2010

I still hold onto this theory. And while re-reading my description here I felt compelled to illustrate it. I am a visual learner, after all.

The Scale of Human Experience Concept Graphic

This graphic was created to illustrate a concept, but it’s obviously incomplete. No 2D visualization could ever fully flesh out the concept. I suspect a 3D simulation the likes of OpenSpace — NASA’s universe simulator — could hypothetically work, but I’m not developing one of those. 🙂‍↔️

This “example life” visualization assumes a lossless memory, which few people have. Otherwise, the bounds would occasionally drift inward over time. Though it’s been established that even if we’re not consciously aware of what’s happened to us, the body remembers.

The “scribble” area within the blob is intended to infer individual experiences that register on this scale. The longest of these represent the experiences that push those boundaries outward. In this particular simplified good/bad metric, one could consider the longer lines heading toward the orange border as trauma.

No one starts in the same place.

If we were to attempt to compare two life experiences, it would be tempting to plot two of these blobs on top of each other. There’s a few reasons that can’t work.

In a literal sense, just the location we’re born in determines much of the opportunities we’ll ever have. Then consider the unfathomable number of DNA variations, differences in family resources, available healthcare options, blind luck, and the moment of any two people’s births on this graphic would never overlap.

Add the layer of timing, and recognize how different our choices would’ve been if we were born just ten years earlier. And this changes quickly too. Imagine being a junior or senior in high school during the COVID-19 pandemic versus being a freshman or sophomore. Everyone’s lives were affected by it, but there are particular pivotal moments in our lives where these long-term affects are amplified.

Even twins, with near-identical DNA, born in the same place only moments apart have diverging perspectives. They may be closer than any other pair of living things, but never exactly the same. To believe that these differences aren’t significant is to erase these siblings’ individual experiences.

Tolerance

Our sensational tolerance is also different person-to-person, and that tolerance changes over time.

This affects people with different physiological (ex: Ehlers-Danlos) and neurological (ex: Autism) conditions especially so. These experiences are essentially “unknown unknowns” to most people, before we even consider the subjective impact of them.

Different Strokes

People don’t experience the same stimuli the same way. Many would consider drinking one of my favorite ghost pepper lychee martinis as a painful and unpleasant experience.

So even if someone did start at a similar place as someone else, there’s no guarantee having similar experiences will affect them the same way. There are similarities we can find, to be sure — I may enjoy some painful things, but I won’t act like they’re not painful — but we struggle to place these experiences on the same place in a relative scale. This is why pain scales are still done with an archaic and often up-to-interpretation 0-10 scale in doctor’s offices.

My views on free will stem from these concepts.

No One Chooses to Exist

I’ve always felt this way, but I remember holding my darkest unprocessed feelings private at the time. I often wonder if the moment we blink into consciousness itself is more intensely painful for some than others. No matter who we are, transitioning into consciousness must undoubtedly be jarring.

It’s likely a protective measure that we forget much of our early lives. It’s a cacophony of sensations we won’t have tools to understand or rationalize until years — sometimes decades — later.

I don’t believe in free will. Or rather, I believe the degree our will is free is limited by our environment and an infinite number of choices made without us. My choice to have an avocado or eggs for breakfast is about as good as I get.

Updates to My Scale

I’m not going to repeat things I listed in the original post, but here are some new ones.

CW: Some of the experiences I’ll touch upon here are extreme (for me). They’ll be kept vague here, and you can skip them if you want, but the links to other posts within may be graphic or detailed.

Obviously, these lists aren’t exhaustive.

Most Physically Painful Experiences

I’ve learned several techniques for pain management over the years, and these are some of the things I find myself having to really focus my energy on to endure:

• Laser Hair Removal on my face is probably tied for #1 now (with my periodontal injections).
  • Luckily it’s only in very short bursts for about half an hour every 60 days for a finite number of sessions.
• Tattoos on my sternum are next up.
• Drinking too much of a carbonated beverage shortly after recovering from stomach surgery.
  • Pretty much anything that unexpectedly nudges a healing part after surgery.
• My spinal nerve damage and muscle scarring is horrible, not because it’s an extreme but because it’s relentless.
  • Rehab sessions were probably the most painful part of the process.
• Extreme sleep deprivation makes everything hurt. It amplifies every negative sensation and mutes all the positive — like depression on steroids.
  • I haven’t had this issue for many years now. 🤞

Luckily, I haven’t pushed these boundaries in too many new ways since 2010.

Most Emotionally Painful Experiences

I’ve always been called sensitive, and I stopped denying or misdirecting it long ago. I won’t apologize for feeling certain pains more sharply than others do. On the other side of the same coin, I won’t inflate my ego for having an easier time enduring pains others feel more intensely.

Here is where I’ve broken some more new ground — many of which I’ve written about.

• Autistic meltdowns can emotionally burn me out for months or years after.
  • School in general was a massively triggering environment. I was punished for my “behavioral issues” throughout my attendance.
  • Driving or riding in a car triggers PTSD and sensory overload that can lead to this too.
• Sexual coercion experiences made it hard for me to trust myself or others.
• Gender dysphoria makes me disgusted by my own appearance and the feelings of anyone else touching me.
• Being misgendered by people close to me years after coming out to them can occasionally hit me really hard, even when I know they’re supportive.
• Bidding for connection with someone who seems to welcome it only to have them swat it away.
  • Historical Example: I hosted a birthday party in the early years after my family moved to North Plainfield and — through likely unintentional and normal reasons for each person — no one showed up. I put a lot of effort (for a kid) into organizing it and making it fun for my guests.
  • Modern Example: A family member abruptly changing the subject when a vulnerable important topic comes up.
• School-age bullying, especially after moving to a new school.
  • I was desperate enough to bring a knife to school one day in 3rd grade to try and scare my bullies away. (this was pre-Columbine)
• Being separated from friends when moving as a kid.
  • I needed the practice to be decent at making friends now, but it came with great pain while moving around so much.
  • Even as an adult, I didn’t feel like I was making all my choices to move with full autonomy.
• The years when I believed my mom was being exploited, abused, and/or coerced by my stepfather (and enduring it for her children’s sake).
  • I no longer believe this was ever true, but I did think so for many years. — Even more evidence of me not truly understanding my mom’s perspective, despite us being so close.
• Violating my core values to keep a job. I haven’t had to do this yet for my current job, which is incredibly unique.
• Grief. More people have died since my original post, more will continue to, and it never seems to get easier.

I’ve recovered some formative memories I was subconsciously suppressing through therapy, so some of these are a hindsight is 20/20 thing.

Scariest Experiences

• The moments during my suicide attempts when I thought I was successful
• The days after when I realized I wasn’t
• Throwing away my masked self has made me feel existentially afraid for what others will do to me because I can’t pass as cis or allistic anymore.
  • Being unsure if I’ll ever be able to get or keep a job again, even if I can remain free and unharmed.
• When I lived with a guy who slowly revealed himself to be a roid raging abuser (and possibly murderer) in a rented room in a house on the remote edge of Phoenix.
  • I couldn’t afford to live anywhere else at the time, but I had to stealth move away in the night while he was out at the club. He stalked me for a couple years, but luckily never found me.
• Considering enlisting in the military when I was enduring a high-risk mental health moment.
• Watching my government disappear people off the streets during the Black Lives Matter protests.
  • Knowing that our country kidnaps and tortures people without any due process was what originally radicalized me against it, but all the footage and evidence of this happening to our own citizens doing the activism I do regularly made it feel like a real existential threat to myself.
• Watching my government disappear people off the streets, their homes, and their schools in 2025.
  • And seeing many of my neighbors and loved ones letting it happen without resistance.
  • The precarity of: “Will they stand up for me if I need them?”

Greatest Pleasures

I’ll be severely limiting sexual details, don’t worry.

• The dozens of fun new sensory experiences I encounter in the kink community have helped me continuously redefine what can be enjoyable and the degrees to which it’s possible.
• All my traveling and sensory adventures with food have helped me taste some incredible flavors, and I hope I never stop discovering more.
• Finding new art that I really resonate with still fills me with such delight.
  • This is in all mediums, but especially with in-person visual art because its innovative space is the least accessible to me, compared to music, movies, and other more commercial media.
• Spending quality time with my closest chosen family, especially truly freeform leisure time with no specific scheduled events.
  • Visiting this group at the Jersey shore (outside of holidays and their obligations) has brought me to joyful tears many times.
  • I didn’t experience this until I unmasked, then carefully reduced the number of people in my closest orbit to feel 100% safe and unhesitatingly accepted. (The space we choose to meet is also important)
• Nailing an expression of love for someone I care about.
  • Having people show up to activities I plan and enjoy themselves is under this umbrella.
  • I get so much pleasure out of witnessing another person validating that I made a positive impact on their life.
• Receiving expressions of love, given in their own language, and understanding their intent.
  • Receiving expressions of love can sometimes feel uncomfortable for me. It’s no small feat for me to push through and be gracious.
  • I feel all the warm fuzzies, but have trouble knowing how to express it if I don’t know how they want me to do that. Providing clear social cues for that is really helpful.
• Gender euphoria feels like flying. When I’m feeling fully fresh, rested, expressive, and beautiful in a safe space, it’s incredible.

Related: ADHD and Sensory Seeking

Reflecting on Numbness

I haven’t experienced anything on the very edges of my scale in years now. I expect these things will continue to get rarer over time. I try to add things to the happier edges all the time, but it takes a lot more now than it used to. By the same token, there are fewer bad things that’ll truly devastate me.

me, 2010

This was a combination of depression and pessimism. In hindsight, I remember several impactful highs and lows from that era which I couldn’t fully feel at the time for mental health reasons.

It’s easy to rationalize numbness as a thing that just happens as we get older or as our relationships mature, but it’s not — unless we accept it.

Updates to My Advice

Why do terrible tragedies happen to good people?

Because there is no such thing as a good person, and everyone has terrible tragedies in their lives.

If you’re looking for answers to this question, the best I can give is to learn more about yourself and find your scale of experience. Come to terms with the idea that we know very little and can never know everything. Then, think of a question that will actually help you in your own life and ask that one instead.

me, 2010

My answer today isn’t pragmatically different, but I think I’d communicate it differently.

Labeling the entirety of a living being with broad terms does a disservice to the complexity of their identity and their actions’ impact. Dispensing fair moral judgments on an entire person is impossible and unethical to attempt.

We can judge actions, but judging people is dehumanizing. (see abolition)
We must decide who we spend our time with carefully, but that’s not a statement of moral superiority; it’s a personal boundary.

Values are subjective and ephemeral. Good and bad are oversimplified descriptors that shrink our understanding of ourselves and experiences. I used those words in my graphic above, but pretty much any binary pair can be put in their place to conceptualize some experience we’re trying to understand.

Most of reality exists between extremes. I know gender is what I usually mean when I describe myself as non-binary, but it’s also a philosophical stance. I believe truth almost always exists in the grey areas, in compromise, and in flexible definitions.

Every experience comes with complexity if we give ourselves enough time and focus to see it.