Life is complex. Therefore learning about life is obviously not easy. People can understand more by obtain advice from parents or friends, or through personal experiences. While considering that the former is theoretical, I prefer to the latter, that is more practical. This is because it would bring long term, useful and challenged experiences for people.
First of all, people learn better when they practice. They can learn a lot academic knowledge from books, texts, but only practices and experiments make them obtain information completely. And this case is also true for life. For example, people would learn more about carefulness after being stolen in crowded fairs. Vice versa, their parents may also advise them “be careful when you enter fairs”, but everything would be useless if they just stay at home all day and not participate any fair at all.
Moreover, personal experiences would bring people useful knowledge. This is because people gain it through their life, thus it would relate to their own. For instance, I once had some troubles in taking exams due to my negligent problems. Thus when I took an important exams, I got very bad grades because of these mistakes. It made me realize my faults, improving me to correct it and study better. On the other hand, advice from relatives are also important, but they are very general for people to apply in life.
Furthermore, life provides to people many challenges. People would face to them through their own life, and challenges make them stronger. For example, people would be slier if they face to more social problems; ones would know how to succeed once they failed many times; or students would be more confident while they study far from homes and parents. In other words, only social experiences can make people mature, not any theoretical information from others.
In conclusion, maturation is gradual and long process. People should need both other’s advice as well as personal experiences to accomplish their own cognitive abilities about life. However, I would also recommend they should experience more in order to gain better knowledge