Some advice I’d like to give myself, distilled from years of well-meaning individuals. I hope I can live this out:
Never compare yourself or your life to others. You are on your own journey with its own inherent lessons. If you compare yourself with others, you run the risk of becoming vain, jealous, and shallow, not to mention ungrateful for all the wonderful things you do indeed possess. Instead let others inspire you. Appreciate their gifts and what they bring to the world, and glean what you can from them. People are often beautiful and their energy should somehow move you forward towards something good. Keep interested in your journey and remain aware of yourself. Keep fighting for who you want to be.
Although people can be mean, selfish, brutally self-centered, and harsh, even after you’ve shown them compassion and generosity and laid yourself at their feet, it’s really no excuse to become cynical. Open your heart to people, even if it means getting hurt. And don’t do it because you think you’ll get something in return. Because this won’t always be the case. Do it because it’s the right thing to do and at the end of the day it contributes to the flowering of your own humanity.
Good people will tell you to follow your dreams, take big chances, and do what feels right. I think they’re right. But it's alright to be afraid when the time comes to do these things, because although the words are always inspiring, real life doesn't fit into little boxes that we try to draw for it.
Everyone is obsessed with finding someone to love them. Fair enough: this is a deeply-rooted human need. But I think most of the time it’s harder to let yourself love someone else without fear than it is to find someone who loves you. Hardest of all is loving and forgiving yourself. We are always searching for somebody to complete us. When our relationships with others fail to fulfill us, we move on to the next one. Other people can add wonderful dimensions to our lives, but we are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us.
Fear, self-pity, defeat, anxiety, despair, hopelessness, and resignation, are all just really bad habits. It’s comfortable and familiar to operate from these places. Living in the light and becoming the beautiful person you have the potential to become is terrifying, and so is something often avoided.
It’s so easy to want to wait around for life to change on its own. A car to stop, a star to fall, something to alter destiny. But you can waste away waiting with anticipation for this to happen. This isn’t how it works. You have to your own change agent and unless you take a chance and act boldly, you will continue on the path you were traveling before.
Many attitudes and assumptions in life are often wrong. They are also what stand between you and other people. Human relationships are complicated and important. Be aware of this before you close yourself off to others. But to a certain degree be careful and discerning about who gets your time and your love. Not everyone will be as careful with your heart as you are with theirs. Don’t waste your time and affection on those who don’t want it or can’t accept it. They have their reasons. Move on to give it to those who do.
Love other people, even if it hurts. Get to know them and let them get to know you. Treat people like people. Look them in the eye and don’t feel too vulnerable to smile at them. Do what you can to help others because it’s the right thing to do. Don’t be afraid to be human. Show others your humanity in your needs and wants and take joy in the beautiful connection that happens when others do the same.
Having dreams and plans is a wonderful thing. But sometimes there isn’t a clear blueprint to follow. Sometimes you have no dreams or plans. In those times the only thing you can do is take the next logical step. Keep making choices until inspiration hits.
It’s true that the things you regret most are the things you didn’t do instead of the ones you did. But it’s also easy to think the things we haven’t known are somehow better than the things we have known. Be OK with the choices you’ve made. You can’t go back in time but you can make the most of regret: it can become a power for good in the time that we have left if it galvanizes us to action. Don’t let regret start taking the place of your dreams, no matter how old you get. You can’t ever go back, but you can make amends for the bad things in the past by adding new and beautiful things to your future.
You can’t do everything. But you can do something. And that’s better than nothing, even if it falls short of a dream. Sometimes the only choice you have in your circumstances is one of your attitude. Make a good one.
There is a time to try harder and a time to give up. Giving up is harder sometimes. It can be difficult to let go, but some things you just can’t force. Gracefully surrender them and trust that it wasn’t meant to be. Some people are only meant to be in our lives for a short amount of time. Life replaces things to make room for new things in our hearts.
We shape our own lives by our choices, conscious and unconscious. Life is the sum of these choices. You are what you repeatedly do and you tend to do what you repeatedly think. Don’t think of the negative but imagine your life as it might be. Create yourself. Make yourself up as you go along, like jazz.
And one of the more beautiful things I’ve ever read, about “the persistence of song” in a sometimes sad and broken world:
“In a life, in any life, bad things happen. Many good things happen, of course, we know what they are — joy, tenderness, success, beauty — but some bad things happen as well. Sometimes very bad things happen. Children sicken and die. People we love don’t love us, can never love us. Sons die, needles in their gangrenous arms, no matter how fathers value them and try to save them from degradation and despair. We lose everything we have worked to acquire, money and houses and dreams and friends. The meat of life goes bad one day and leaves us sickened.Still, we tend to go on. We tend to want to live, to breathe the air, to stay in London or Prague and go to the theater and see the bright, the tantalizing new thing. We generally tend to love, and to be loved. We tend to want. We want to live while we live, not to be inert or silent as the rocks. We want to do something with the time we have, something that will give that time a certain meaning, a certain weight.We tend to continue. We tend to continue to admire other men and women, to fall sumptuously, even if temporarily, in love, just for the sensation, just for the way we feel in our skin, the exhilaration, the exhaustion, the innate and delectable perfection of the first kiss, the plunge into the sublime abyss. Even if very bad things happen.”
Jen
