Just an exercise in list making:

1. You are a special and unique person

Not a special and unique human. No. There is probably at least one other like you and your genes are pretty common. So are your features, nothing here makes you special or unique.

But you are special as a person. Your personality, that which makes you a person, has been devised by thousands of experiences thrown at you by life. The order and type of these experiences are unique, therefore you are unique.

Learn from this to not identify with others and understand that no one can be in your shoes. You are doing your best and in the end the race is only with yourself, says Mary Schmich.

2. You will never, ever know what happens when you die

If that is ever known life will be a prison, an exercise of sanctity or lust to either score afterlife points or use the little time you’ve got before eternal darkness takes over. But in my opinion we, the ones here, will never know whats next simply because we’ll have no one to ask. No one comes back to haunt us.

This means the future will always be uncertain. Therefore we require some kind of balance, or respect for life where actions help us become beings we like so that we can do the next thing:

3. Indulge in yourself, you are the greatest experience of them all

I see zombies all over, people who simply don’t inhabit their bodies anymore. What is life worth if all you do is follow and constantly internalize the input from outside of you. You have your way, find it and lead, be the leader in your own life.

4. Be good at what you do

This is the best money advice that you’ll ever get.

5. Enjoy your world

Truth is travel is not easy. Actually it is becoming the most expensive thing. A while ago material possessions were so cherished that one would dedicate their life just for a piece of that. Now immaterial possessions are just as cherished: experiences, stories, portfolio, careers, coolness, spirituality, abstinence and so on. People will always apply the same model in everything that they do but only change the names of the ingredients.

So do your best and enjoy your world even if you never leave the city you were born into. Have no stress that multicultural traveling will open your mind and life in some forgotten village will close it. It is simply not true. Indeed you will have far less experience in handling novelty, but you can be an open minded person without actually having to cover half the planet for it.

6. Life is not a school and learning implies effort

There is no such thing as the school of life. It is only some thing people with weak minds invented to justify for the trickery and thieving of other well intended and well educated folks. Also shit that comes along is not meant to teach you anything. Forget as best as you can this superficial spirituality.

Whatever you want to learn will require work. A lot of work. Learning invades your entire mind and will occupy your entire time.

7. Know that the truth is relative

This is one of the most relaxing attitudes you can have. Understand this and you will feel less anxious to prove yourself, care less about what others think, feel less misunderstood and overall have a much better relationship with yourself.

8. What you do affects the world

Especially ignorance. Even more so not doing anything. Lack of care. You get the point.

9. There are special people, you should find them

It is not the famous people nor the rich. It might be, but most often there will be the people you just happen to meet because they must somehow change your life. They don’t event know it, you somehow do but not sure why.

10. Practice introspection

Man know thyself; then thou shalt know the Universe and God. Need I say more? Ah, yes. In case you are not interested in knowing the Universe and God, i mean they could be pretty boring and annoying (one is mostly empty and the other knows everything), introspection still is very important.

You cannot be happy without knowing yourself. The more you know what you are, the more you feel who you are the more you will understand what makes you happy. Happiness is peculiar and particularly individual that is why pursuit is needed and one way to go is inside.

11. Be the master of your freedom

You literally can do anything. You literally can not achieve anything.

For example say you are 50 y.o. and suddenly decide to become an opera singer after a lifetime of accountant work. You can do it. Literally. Join a canto course, sing a few hours a day, every day. Join another canto course, read up on this, learn music. If you have the physical properties in 10 years you will sing opera amazingly.

But as achievement is concerned, most probably you will not be lead singer at any state opera anywhere. Nor will you be featured in about any place. Even if you would get this it should be owned to you being an oddity. Achievement is ephemeral.

If you understand this and stop chasing the fata morgana of achievement you will master your freedom.

12. Principles are rock, ideas are scissors and reality is paper.

A principle can ruin an idea as the idea can be simply crushed by the moral, aesthetic, logic or religious weight of the principle.

Reality is paper. It can envelope the principle and simply make it disappear.

Ideas are scissors. That’s what we do with our creativity, we simply cut out reality in bits we can handle, in shapes we like. Ideas beat reality. It doesn’t matter that we love cars or that driving is a hobby, a passion.