Siddhartha and the Western World

Herman Hesse's book Siddhartha is a metaphor for how we (being every human) live our lives. Through out all of our years as a child, teen, and an adult, we're trying to find ourselves. In Siddhartha, Hesse explains that the way we find ourselves is not through being taught, but is by experiencing life. But when we try to experience things, we are in the way. Like when our parents tell us something not to do because it will end up hurting us in the long run, it doesn't make any sense until we get older and realize what they said made perfect sense. And in the western part of the world, we often find ourselves trying to live life through others shadows; being taught things when we should be experiencing them. The only way to learn is by experiencing.