An experience versus experience

I found the differentiation between an experience and experience in general that Dewey talks about to be interesting. "Things are experienced  but not in such a way that they are composed into an experience." (305) Previous to this, I would have thought of an experience as a singular event, whereas experience would be a larger, more coherent, understanding. Someone may have had an experience of being on a single deep-sea diving trip, but I would prefer to go into the water with someone who had overall experience with deep sea diving, perhaps as a trainer or lifeguard. However, this definition makes more sense, because literally everything that we come across is necessarily experienced in some fashion. What qualifies one experience over another is the "an", whether it was truly notable or memorable in some way, rather than just the processing of information that all experience consists of. I really liked Dewey's metaphor: "When a flash of lightning illuminates a dark landscape, there is a momentary recognition of objects. But the recognition is not itself a mere point in time." (303) In order to recognize things exposed to you for a split second, you must first have an understanding of those objects to allow them to slot into place. Experience is necessary to build an experience.