[fapjacks]

I agree with what you've said about extremities of life experience, and I agree that people fundamentally experience life differently from one another. As an exception among most of my peers, I support the notion that someone hardly exposed to danger could become affected by e.g. PTSD. But that being said, I can assure you that there is nothing that comes close to the experience of combat, and nothing-er still that comes close to experiencing it continuously across years. It's not like being in the same room when grandpa passes away. It's being consumed by human terminality, every conceivable permutation of mortal extreme. Surely you've read about the continual shelling of the trenches, and at least intellectually understood there's a difference. But even then, I'm sure there have been folks who, through their own relative existence and differential experience, have stumbled high on mushrooms on the same tacit wisdoms as those realized by ascetic monks who spend their entire lives on the edge of existential crises. I'm totally sure it happens, but it doesn't happen often. I'm surprised all the time, but just based on his reply, I made an educated guess, which turned out to be right. I don't have children, but I know enough people with kids to understand that having kids flips a bit in the human brain. It's an experience with a tacit component that can't be got by other means, though I'm sure someone's been there somehow that didn't involve creating a child. There are exceptions to every rule, but they are exceptions.