Dawn and Dusk

Okay, so I stole this format from Veronica’s blog, because I loved it and I feel a lot of life advice/ lessons learned can be summed up in a quick bullet point while learning them takes a whole personal process. Anyway, a lot of these are to a great extent based on my view of the world, so take them with a grain of salt. Fell free to disagree!

• 1. Being human doesn’t mean being purely logical or purely emotional. Too much of either and you’ll end up unfulfilled. Find the balance that works for you.

• 2. It’s okay to feel sad! Sadness is a vital human emotion that lets you feel… well, human. Happiness is meaningless without sadness anyway.

• 3. Seeking out joy directly always leads to feeling emptier. Enjoyment is different, and something you discover. Joy is a fleeting emotion anyway, so who cares?

• 4. Don’t box up your thoughts thinking “Oh, I can’t even think that! That makes me a bad person to even think about that!“ Allow your thoughts to come and go. You can’t control many of your thoughts, but you can control what you do with them. Everyone doubts. Everyone questions. Everyone has thought of terrible things. That’s part of being human.

• 5. Your opinions are separate from you. They are like objects in a box that you carry around with you. If you come across a better one, pick it up. To change your mind on something isn’t a weakness. (Of course, there’s a balance there)

• 6. Really no piece of advice about something will apply universally. Life is about adaptation, not following a script. “Don’t care what other people think” is great advice! Unless you’re being a total unjustified A-hole, then you should really just catch the hint and try to be better.

• 7. Realize you might be wrong. There are literally millions of sets of beliefs about select things that exist, the likelihood you somehow have everything figured out at this very moment is incredibly low.

• 8. Everyone has stuff going on in their lives. Almost everyone alive could tell you a story about when their life has been hard. Everyone is miserable in some way. Which means A) No one is truly alone and B) We can all help one another be a little less sad every once and a while!

• 9. Regret is probably one of the most crucial emotions in life. “Don’t dwell on the past” is good advice to an extent, but don’t forget it either. Truly regretting something is the first step to not repeating a mistake.

• 10. I never really liked when people said “What’s done can not be undone” or “Well, you can’t change the past” after you mess up. Sure, like the phrase is technically correct, but if you mess up and do something stupid, you can’t just say “Oh well, darn, can’t change it now”. No. Fell bad. Feel regret. Otherwise you’ll make the same mistake over and over and just be like “Well, what can I do?”

• 11. It’s okay to say “I don’t know” rather than pretend you understand something. Lying, even about stupid and meaningless things, is a great way to loose people you care about. Plus it’s okay to not know the “why” to a lot of things, that’s why growing older and talking to others can be rather enlightening!

• 12. It’s ok to let go. Especially when it’s the right time to. You’ll have to say goodbye to every single person you meet in this life at some point, it’s just a matter of how much time you had with them. You don’t have to stick with absolutely everything and everyone. Sometimes it’s just healthier to just let go when you realize you’re grasping too tightly at what ends up being a ball of tacks.

Anyway, I would have added more, but A) That’s already pretty long and B) While writing that I came across a ton of things I wanted to write, but realized that I have yet to followed a lot of the advice I’d want to give and quite frankly hypocritical advice is often kinda meaningless *cough cough Polonius to Laertes cough*

Cheers!