Early in the semester we discussed the difference between an encounter and an experience. We experience objects (things) in the world, and we encounter subjects. For example, we watched a clip from the movie “American Beauty” in which a boy had an encounter with a plastic bag floating in the wind. He said, “The bag danced with me.” For those few moments when the bag was moving in the wind, he was encountering the bag as a subject (rather than an object). When he left the bag behind, it once again was an object.
An encounter is a happening, an amazing relation between the self and the other. When we reflect and think about the impact of an encounter, this becomes our experience.
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