40 lessons I learned in 40 years
Today marks the beginning of a new decade. Here are a few lessons I learned along the way.
Ask your grandparents a lot of questions while you can. When you walk through the American Cemetery in Normandy, you’ll wish you knew how many of those men knew your grandaddy.
Forgive quickly - that includes forgiving yourself.
Your weight is the least interesting thing about you. Instead of obsessing about the size of your thighs in your twenties, learn a new language.
Smoking cigarettes will not make you look cool.
When you are a junior in college and the lovely therapist asks how you’ve been feeling lately, tell her the truth.
Don’t be the first to let go in a hug.
Don’t ride skateboards barefoot.
Sunscreen should be worn all year long.
The nights you lose drinking to oblivion, the panic that seeps in every morning, the wrecked cars, the shaky hands, and all of the accompanying turmoil won’t last forever. Once you are on the other side of it, that pain will become your purpose. Don’t let the heavy shame of it all weigh you down so much you stop moving your feet.
Keep going.
When you move back in with your parents and have to share the upstairs bathroom with your elderly widowed grandmother, don’t complain so much. There is a reason you are there. Show up and be of service.
Ask how you can help as often as possible, then follow through.
When you break up with the person you thought would be The One, don’t permanently delete every photo that reminds you of him. The pain will fade, but you will always wish you kept that picture of yourself standing on a longboard, riding a wave on the West Coast of Ireland.
Take yourself to dinner, go see the new Indepence Day movie by yourself, sit in the lobby of The Ace Hotel and read a book. Enjoying the company you keep when you are alone will change your life.
Always make sure the internal temperature of a roast chicken is 165 degrees before you serve it to guests.
Wear shower shoes in public bathing areas.
When all else fails, scream crying into a pillow is pretty cathartic.
A well-kept journal is a wonderful confidante and one of the greatest measures of personal growth. Refer back to your old ones every now and then and give yourself some grace. You’ve come a long way, baby.
You will never change them, so take care of yourself, even if that means not leaving a forwarding address when you move.
Don’t give up on the kindness of strangers. When you are heading toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in the middle of a torrential downpour and both of your wipers stop working, a kind man at the gas station will wipe down your windshield with a microfiber towel and spray RainX all over the glass for you. It will get you home safely.
But just in case - always keep a bottle of RainX and a microfiber towel in your trunk. Also, a flashlight, umbrella, bottle of water, and an ice scraper.
You do not have to monetize everything that brings you joy.
You will never regret the time you spend traveling. Buy the ticket, take the trip, figure it out. One day, you’ll be sitting in an office cubicle and the screensaver on your desktop computer will be a stock photo of cliffs you jumped off in Manarola. The memory of feeling that alive will move you to tears.
Keep meditating after you leave the ashram.
Don’t confuse your career with your identity.
There is no shame in carrying those beach chairs across the hot sand and opening those big, blue umbrellas for as many seasons as you can swing it. You will miss that summer job dearly.
You will never be satisfied by following someone else’s timeline.
Yes, Bali lives up to the hype.
Take breaks from social media.
Call your parents more.
Use your blinker.
Those shitty jobs will teach you more invaluable life skills than the 9-5 you land in your late 30’s ever will. So, wash dogs, make pierogies, take the bus to Brooklyn and help Jess stuff envelopes. You are not wasting your time - you are becoming resilient, tenacious, creative.
Date. Swipe right. Get your hopes up just enough to put on your good jeans and drive to downtown Baltimore for what will be one of the worst dates of your life. It’s all part of it. You’ll get better at rejection, you’ll have a better sense of what you don’t want, so that when everything you do want approaches you one night while you are standing in a group of your friends, you will be open and surprised and ready.
You are not stuck.
Read Kurt Vonnegut, Sylvia Plath, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, and Zadie Smith. Read fewer self-help books. Read more about philosophy and American History and theology. Memorize poetry by Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, and Emily Dickinson.
Vote.
Wash your hands often and for longer than you think is necessary. You won’t realize how often you touch your face until a virus spreads across the entire world in what seems like a matter of minutes.
Listen more.
Grief is a wild ride. Buckle up.
Sharing openly about where you are has the potential to attract others who are feeling the same way. Start the Substack. Even though you don’t have a clever title. Even though being vulnerable is scary. Press the publish button and let go of expectation.
Excellent!!!
Love all of them - but especially that you followed through with #40 on the list.