15 Important Life Lessons

1. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Learn to laugh at your mistakes.

2. Life is too short it to waste it on resentments, bitterness or grudges you’re holding against others.

3. You don’t have to win every argument and fight. Sometimes it’s OK to just agree to disagree.

4. Make peace with your past – then let it go, and move on.

5. Choose to go after what brings you happiness.

6. Don’t compare yourself to others.

7. It doesn’t really matter what others think about you – just live your own life and be true to who you are.

8. Life isn’t always fair – but sometimes good things happen, too!

9. Ignore your feelings – and keep taking the next step.

10. Ask for what you want.

11. Don’t suffer in silence – reach out for support.

12. Everything changes.

13. Be willing to experiment and try something new.

14. The most important thing is to love and be loved.

15. Believe that the best is yet to come

I always feel as if I’m struggling to become someone else…

“I always feel as if I’m struggling to become someone else. As if I’m trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I suppose it’s part of growing up, yet it’s also an attempt to re-invent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself – as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What’s missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I’m still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as I’ll come to defining myself.”

Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil…

“In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil,” the man said. “Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities, but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.”

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Create a life that feels good on the inside.

Not one that just looks good on the outside.

– Jordan Llamas

“The sun shall always rise upon a new day and there shall always be a rose garden within me.

“The sun shall always rise upon a new day and there shall always be

a rose garden within me. Yes, there is a part of me that is broken,

but my broken soil gives way to my wild roses.”

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back.

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads – at least that’s where I imagine it – there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.”

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

The Hospital Window

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room’s only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back. The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.

Every afternoon when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by.

Although the other man couldn’t hear the band – he could see it. In his mind’s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.

Days and weeks passed.

One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep. She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.

He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed.

It faced a blank wall. The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window

The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall.

She said, “Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.”