Intellectual Knowledge Vs. Experience

We watched this documentary this weekend and the guy giving the documentary said something perfectly that I've tried saying but haven't been able to put into words correctly until now. He said "Knowing something intellectually and experiencing it first hand are two completely different things. Until you experience it first hand, you don't really know anything." That's something I've tried to explain to so many people so many times. It really explains a lot in so many areas of my life. My life in China, my culture shock, my readjustment to the states which I'm still going through. In fact, I started writing. I want to write a book about readjustment and re-entry to America after living overseas because there's literally no resources out there dealing with that subject. If there are please tell me. Cuz I've run across very little. I think I found a few articles that were entirely vague and unhelpful. They identify the problem and what's happening but they don't offer any solution. I don't know if I'll be able to provide a fix-all solution because everyone deals with it differently...but...if nothing else I think I just need to make it clear to those readjusting that yes, it is frustrating and yes, other people are dealing with it too. And no, you're not crazy for feeling the way you do. It's a perspective that most of the world is probably completely clueless about. And it's a perspective that's growing to have a larger and larger population as China and other countries are growing and more and more Americans and people from other countries are going overseas for long periods of time. And more and more kids are being raised overseas with no sense of "home." Your nationality is not automatically your home. Wouldn't that be simple. But it's not that simple.
So...I started writing about all that...just to get my thoughts down. Try to make some sense of it. Make some progress and where I want to go with it. Hopefully I'll be able to do something with it.