There is a phrase "He is a man of ripe experience." A correct way of use this phrase is as following, and others are just seemingly, in fact they are not the case.
If it means that he has been living longer, he has a ripe experience more than those who have been living shorter, which is correct. The longer he has been living, the riper his experiences are, which is natural. So, other ways of use else than this--almost case is so-- just look like so,in fact we can not say whose experience is richer or poorer among people who have been living for the same length. The quantity of experience is equal among who has been living for same period.
What is evidence that ones experience is ripe ? For almost case, he can tell us interestingly his experiences that we have not experienced, and we say his experience is ripe. We are not interested in ordinary daily life. It is interesting becase we don't have experience such like that. This is not only for our conversation, but also for TV program and books so on.
Therefore, the measure for "ripeness" of experience is if his experience can be topic. Then, We can say that ripeness of experience is that he has been experiencing interesting things. Here, problem is not quantity of experience, but if we are interested in it.
If we say his appetite is large, we think it meas he eats many as quantity. We cannot say he has a big appetite even when he eats many kinds of dishes, but the amount of food as a whole is little. Like this case, we can estimate for his experience only when we think how long he has been living. One whose experience is interesting for us have not experienced ordinary ten years, without things make his heart go pitter-patter.
We can say the same thing for love experience. Ripeness of love experience generally means she has got lots of boyfriends. Again, this is just seeming. We have to distinguish richness of love experience from the number of her boyfriend she has had.
It will be clear thinking an extreme case. We suppose that she has had a diffrent boyfriend each month for five years, and he has had only one girlfriend for five year. It is true that the number of her lovers is more than that of his, but she has less opportunity like having quarrels with her boyfriend, sleepling, or laughing together with him. There must be so many things that she could not know about her boyfriend until they have been lovers for five years. She can not experience these things.
Perhaps she can tell us a lot about her many boyfriend, "He is ......, and another is...." (though that is not so interesting for me). In fact, there is a TV program like such. It is just abundance of topic and not a matter of ripeness of love experience.
It it sure that one-sided love for ten years and she had not loved another is a love experience.
We need a proper measure when we try to estimate something. Without any proper measure, i.e., in spite of impossibility to compare, trial to "appraise" leads to, for example, wrong conviction that my love is more serious than others'. What is suitable for a measure for depth of love ? How can my love be compared with others'?
Or a sense that things expressed numerically can be believed surely leads to be swindled. Besides trivial fraud such as "you can get money easily," there is a catch-phrase of career school that rate of pass exam is XX%.
If ripeness of experience could be estimated, a proper measure had to be nothing else than time. And time is distributed equally among all people. Time never relates directly generally to his status, money and power. My ten years and yours are the same ten years. There is no room we can say whose ten years are richer than others. (25/Mar./00)