Adults try to impart their wisdom to the young in the hopes that they can help them avoid the mistakes they have made. The youth are having none of it.

Thus, as we grow older we tend to learn the same lessons on our own that everybody else has learned over, and over, and over.

In the best fashion of trying to pass on my newfound wisdom, though, I want to pass on a few things I learned today, in alphabetical order:

• Be honest with people, but be ready to face the consequences.

• Don't try to talk about things when your mind is racing because you've just been told you'll never speak to someone important to you again for the rest of your life because you just placed the straw that broke the camel's back.

• Even when you think you've been there before and know what you're doing, don't count on it. Every situation is different.

• Feeling sorry for yourself is really good - for the first fifteen minutes or so. Then you need to get up, dust yourself off and keep going, but you'll probably be too busy sulking in the bed.^*

• I think in the end, living in a little shack out in the woods, isolating yourself from the rest of the world could really be the ideal existence.^*

• If somebody says that they're not reacting in a certain way because of <whatever>, then they probably really are reacting that way because of <whatever>.^*

• Instincts are the honed products of evolution, but they're still stupid. Don't always trust what you feel, trust what you know.

• It's all too easy to hurt the people who you care about, and care about you.

• Just because you're interested in somebody else, and they seem interested in you, don't project how you feel on them. You're probably wrong.

• Lifelong anything is a cruel myth.^*

• Never take anything at face value. If you do you're asking for trouble.^*

• So you say your life sucks? Nothing works out for you? Well, you probably made it that way.^*

• Things can always get worse.

• Yes, I can now attest to the fact that trust can take a very long to build up and only moments to destroy.

• Your best, most true friends will forgive you, even when you haven't been a good friend to them. Don't test this one too often, though, lest they decide not to be your best, most true friend anymore.

^* Take this with a grain of cynicism salt.

restlessmind