Is Life Is It A'sovereign Experience '?

Is one’s life really that unique? Or are we all expected to follow the roles of society and think we have our own personal experiences? Is life itself a ‘sovereign experience’, as Walker Percy puts it, or just another unvalued thing, like a ‘squalus acanthias’?
Walker Percy makes many abstract points in his essay. For example, when he states, “Why is it almost impossible to gaze directly at the Grand Canyon … and see it for what it is as one picks up a strange object from one’s back yard and gazes directly at it? It is almost impossible because the Grand Canyon … has been appropriated by the symbolic complex which has already been formed in the sightseer’s mind” (1). In this quote, Percy is making a point about the sovereign experience and how no one can experience it. A sovereign experience is when a person lives a unique situation. For example, the man who discovered the Grand Canyon first most likely had this unique situation because his eyes were not tainted with already
She states that “… there is a more essential experience that you owe yourselves … which finally depends on you, in all your interactions with yourself and your world. This is the experience of taking responsibility toward yourselves. Our upbringing as women has so often told us that this should come second to our relationships and responsibilities to other people” (609). By saying this, Rich is trying to convey that people, especially women, need to take responsibility in experiencing education in a way more personal than what the expert has planned. She also tries to instill that women have a tougher time taking responsibility for their education because of the societal ‘package’ that women are second best and not as intelligent as men. It is more difficult because of the pressures that women are not good enough, which brings them down and makes them feel like they are intellectually