I used to hold you as my everything,
And so I built my castles in your lands,
But you proved to me your inadequacies,
With this, how will my castles stand?

Learning from personal experience is reasonable, when you don't let the experience become personal.

Think of all the stories you've heard, Bast. You have a young boy, the hero. His parents are killed he sets out for vengeance. What next?"
Bast hesitated, his expression puzzled. Chronicler answered the question instead. "He finds help. A clever talking squirrel. An old drunken swordsman. A mad hermit in the woods. That sort of thing."
Kvothe nodded. "Exactly! He finds the mad hermit in the woods, proves himself worthy, and learns the names of all things, just like Taborlin the Great. Then with these powerful magics at his beck and call, what does he do?"
Chronicler shrugged. "He finds the villains and kills them."
"Of course," Kvothe said grandly. "Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts. That's why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.

It's weird, all you think about when you're young is gaining your independence, but when those final hours come, people want to go home.

They have lived life. They have experienced joy. They met comfort and they saw deception. Their lives have something for us! Young ones, go to the aged and ask them why their age?

From you I can learn things that nobody knows.