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34 things I’ve learned in 34 years of life

34 things I’ve learned in 34 years of life
A sunset in the rearview mirror of a car on a bridge. Photo by Jan Kopřiva.

I turn 34 tomorrow. Every year, I am surprised I made it this far, and simultaneously, my expectations have changed. They’ve grown to be more complex and realistic, but they’ve also changed in a deeper way. My expectations have worn away like rocks smoothed out from waves crashing against them. I expect less from life, and my life has improved, too.

For years, I struggled to accept this phenomenon about expectations. I thought it was a way of lowering my standards, just being fine with things as they are, and approving of an unjust world. I refused to do this, partially out of anger and frustration. I couldn’t recognize that this kept my expectations vague. I wanted a perfect world, but I couldn’t describe one.

When I say I expect less of life, I don’t mean that my life has gotten worse. Things have improved a great deal. I mean that I don’t expect overnight changes. I don’t expect things to shake out perfectly anymore.

Waves crash against rocks. Photo by Nothing Ahead.

Anyway, I’ve been working on this list for a while. Here are 34 things I learned in my first 34 years of life. I’m still learning a lot of them.

  1. Certainty is a myth. The most important decisions must be made with some doubt. Doubt anyone who pretends to know anything with pure certainty.
  2. Perfection is impossible. Don’t chase it.
  3. Music matters a lot. Prioritize basking in it.
  4. Your body will force you to stop if you don’t pace yourself.
  5. You can’t save the world and you can’t fix everything.
  6. Life doesn’t have to be amazing and satisfying. You can still learn to appreciate how wild and strange it is to exist as you are, where you are.
Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy from Earth with silhouettes of pine trees below. Photo by Nicolas Outin.
  1. Relationships are nourished and cultivated with compassion, curiosity, and integrity.
  2. Arguing with people is an ineffective way to change anything.
  3. Everyone and everything is just trying to make the best of things where they’re at. This helps to navigate how you interact with people, pets, plants, and stars.
  4. Nothing is as simple as it seems at first glance.
  5. Taking care of yourself is your primary occupation, always. You can’t do anything else if you don’t start there.
  6. Nobody accomplishes everything they want to before they die. Don’t expect to be the first.
A solitary figure walking across vast desert dunes under a cloudy sky. Photo by Sean Conway.
  1. Don’t finish books that suck to read. They won’t eventually get better. Your time is more important than that.
  2. You can have compassion without trying to rescue others from the consequences of their own decisions.
  3. Know your enemy, because it knows you and wants to keep you from seeing it.
  4. Not everyone has integrity. Pretense is far more popular than being genuine.
  5. A lot more people would rather assume they know the truth than to seek the complexities of reality.
  6. Reality is terrifying and nobody knows everything.
Vast view of a star-filled night sky, showcasing countless twinkling stars. Image by Kein Lander.
  1. Experts exist. People with terrible agendas spend a lot of time obscuring what the experts say, though.
  2. The world is terribly unjust. It is nevertheless important to work on making it more just.
  3. Hope is not about feelings. It is about work. (“Hope is a discipline” – Mariame Kaba)
  4. Speak your truth. Keeping quiet out of fear will not help you. (“Your silence will not protect you.” -Audre Lorde)
  5. Not talking politics is a privilege reserved by and for rich, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual, white people.
Close-up of a wire fence with loops of razor wire at the top. Photo by Engin Akyurt.
  1. It’s okay to know you’ve been victimized. Don’t let them accuse you of having a “victim mindset.” That just means they expect you to be silent about injustice.
  2. Silencing the victims of violence is a form of violence. Silence about violence is another form of violence.
  3. Dynamic disability means that your limits and needs are inconsistent. Listening to your body is never perfect, but you can get better at it.
  4. Balance is not holding still. It requires constant adjustments, movements, and practice.
  5. The “right way” to do things is frequently a lie.
  6. Most people take the wrongs things too seriously, or not seriously enough.
  7. It’s okay to take a break. Necessary, even. Things won’t fall apart (more than they would anyway) if you rest.
  8. Failure is not a weakness, and it is rarely final. Decisions are experiments.
  9. Feelings don’t belong on a to-do list. Procrastinating on them, and trying to feel them all when you “have time,” isn’t how they work.
  10. Do as much of what you want as you possibly can.
  11. Profit is theft. Capitalism is a grift. Dismantling extreme wealth won’t do as much harm as we’re already dealing with.

Inspired by this video.