Monday

Recycled Advice

As I sit here tonight reflecting over the past few weeks, months, years, I'm finding out some hard truths. I'm tired. I am completely and utterly emotionally worn out. I looked at Nate tonight and asked, "What is it going to take for me to get it together and move forward?" His advice was simple, "Stop comparing your life to other people's lives. Your life is yours, not theirs. You just have to have that mindset and know it."

I'm always searching for good quotes. Secretly, I've always wanted to be the person of few words that could get the point across in some profound thought or sentence. Jimmy Buffett has a song called "Lone Palm", which has been a song that has really burrowed into my soul for whatever reason. There's a line in it that says, "I knew this girl made of memories and phrases, who lived her whole life in both chapters and stages. Danced til the dawn, wished all her worries away." I get it. I totally wholeheartedly get it. I am that girl.

In 1997, a very prolific "speech" was published in the Chicago Tribune by Mary Schmich, addressed to the graduating class of that year. Later, it was turned into a "song" of sorts. Many of you have heard it, likely ad nauseum. I have memorized every word and it has long since been burned into my memory. I used to have it printed and would take it to work and put it up so I could read it and really live by it. At any given point in my life, I have been able recall an applicable piece of the speech. The advice was not profound, really, but it has certainly played out over the last 19 years for me. I will post it below, but first...

Folks, I'm tapping out. Metaphorically, of course. I don't want a bunch of people all worried that I'm going to nose dive off the deep end. I'm just reeling it all back in. All the energy that I've thrown at people that do not want it; all of the time I've spent trying to convince anyone that would listen that I'm here and I care and I'll do anything. I've realized that they weren't listening and quite frankly, I'm empty. It isn't that I don't care or I'm turning my back to people in my life; I'm just no longer laying a field of emotions in front of ultimately toxic people, only to keep receiving the proverbial black eye. We are all trying to figure out this ride of life and I have a duty to put myself back together and live it. I cannot make people believe that I'm a genuine, good person.

I've recently taken inventory of folks in my life. I am ashamed at how I have taken my beloved husband for granted. He is steady and has a true heart. He makes me want to keep striving and he loves me for who I am. We have a love that is quiet, yet fierce and strong and I have spent way too long wrecked with worry that it will all vanish. Perhaps I have refused to believe that I was good enough to have that in my life.

As for my friends, I am calling to mind a line from the speech below that is clanging like a bell in my head: "Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours."

I've had too many "friends" that have been reckless with my heart. I no longer have the space or energy for the toxic folks. It is time to untangle myself from all the webs. So, here's the speech. I've actually printed myself another copy and it will hang on my wall to help me navigate the next chapter. Thanks for reading! :)

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

-Mary Schmich