On the other hand, there is no time for mediocre experiences. I am still young, but I feel keenly aware of how few sunny weekends there are in a lifetime. These cannot be wasted on bad movies in bad company. I hope to be a far better curator of my time, just because there isn’t so much of it.
Paradoxically, that line of thinking is what leads to worse experiences. It is impossible to optimise everything, and if you never give a chance to a bad movie or bad company, you will never be surprised. You cannot know if a movie is bad until you see it, you can only know what other people thought of it. Even the worst movie can mean something to someone at the right time. A bad movie in good company can even be more valuable than a good movie in good company: The moments after a bad movie when you both get to riff on what was wrong with it can lead to moments of laughter, joy, creativity, and human connection that are more lasting than watching a good movie.
Is laying down in the grass staring at the sky a mediocre experience? Maybe some days. In others it will be exactly what you needed and didn’t know.
Give too much emphasis on curating and spontaneous gems will pass you by.
I’m writing this to my younger self as much as I’m writing it to you. I have no doubt my words won’t change your outlook in one go and that you have to learn this experience for yourself, but the sooner you do the fewer time you’ll feel to have wasted.
And remember it doesn’t matter anyway. If you’re an atheist, dying means you won’t feel or remember anything. If you’re religious, dying means an eternal existence. Either way, “wasted” time makes no difference.
You can put mathematical flesh on this concept by reading up on the statistics behind the "multiarmed bandit". You get suboptimal performance if you never take any risks. Since you can't 100% quantify all "risks" involved in watching a bad movie or the joys, you can't just plug numbers in and crank the crank to determine exactly how often you should explore for optimal results, but you can still get the general gist that if you don't roll the dice every so often you won't get the best outcome.
It isn't even necessarily about watching "bad movies" on purpose. Even in the space of movies, one dice roll I've made is to watch the best movie of some genre I'm not particularly into. Even if it doesn't "convert" me to a fan of the genre this has often paid off for me. Another example is a lot of people get into musical ruts very early in life, often I think not even having a clue what the diversity that is out there is like. It doesn't take much to just make a random leap across the landscape to somewhere you've never been to check a new space out.
This is a more accurate take. I don’t mean to say "optimise every waking minute“, but "roll the dice more". This might just mean ordering something different, but also saying yes to more things when the other option is staying home and watching Netflix.
Wouldn't you think that to be able to appreciate good movies, you should at least have seen a bad one too?
You definitely shouldn't waste your time on bad experiences deliberately, but with only positive and rewarding experiences you miss out on growing your own frame of reference and risk becoming blasé or completely risk-averse.
And good experiences can't always be planned or divined by browsing reviews.
