Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart

My beautiful friend, Mary, gave me this book for my 21st birthday, and it has since then served as a piece of inspiration for me. It's about learning some of life's truths before it's too late. I thought I'd share a few of my favorites...and leave it up to you to read the rest of the book on your own!

1. We are what we do.

"How many times do we have to feel betrayed and surprised at the disconnect between people's words and their actions before we learn to pay more attention to the latter than the former? Most of the heartbreak that life contains is a result of ignoring the reality that past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior."

2. Feelings follow behavior.

"But any change requires that we try new things, risking always the possibility that we might fail...It is our determination to overcome fear and discouragement that constitutes the only effective antidote to the sense of powerlessness over unwanted feelings."

3. Life's two most important questions are "Why?" and "Why not?" The trick is knowing which one to ask.

"Acquiring some understanding of why we do things is often a prerequisite to change. This is what Socrates meant when he said, 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' Once we acknowledge that there exists below our consciousness a swamp of repressed desires, resentment, and motivations that affect our day-to-day behavior, we have made an important step toward self-understanding. If people are reluctant to answer 'Why?' questions in their lives, they also tend to have trouble with 'Why not?' The latter implies risk. To refuse to take risks, to protect our hearts against all loss, is an act of despair."

4. Happiness is the ultimate risk.

"One of the benefits of chronic pessisim is that it is a safe position. Because their expectations are chronically low, pessimists are seldom disappointed. Asking someone to relinquish depression is often met with resistance. To be happy is to take the risk of losing that happiness. All significant accomplishments require taking risks: the risk of failure in invention, in exploration, or in love."

5. There is nothing more pointless, or common, than doing the same things and expecting different results.

"I don't have answers applicable to every relationship; I believe in what works. What you are doing now isn't working. Why not try something else?"

6. Love is never lost, not even in death.

"Like all who mourn I learned an abiding hatred for the word 'closure,' with its comforting implications that grief is a time-limited process from which we all recover. The idea that I could reach a point when I would no longer miss my children was obscene to me and I dismissed it. I had to accept the reality that I would never be the same person, that some part of my heart, perhaps the best part, had been cut out and buried..."

7. Of all the forms of courage, the ability to laugh is the most profoundly therapeutic.

"To be able to experience fully the sadness and absurdity that life so often presents and still find reasons to go on is an act of courage abetted by our ability to both love and laugh. Above all, to tolerate the uncertainty we must feel in the face of the large questions of existence requires that we cultivate an ability to experience moments of pleasure."

8. Forgiveness is a form of letting go, but they are not the same thing.

"Widely confused with forgetting or reconciliation, forgiveness is neither. It is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves. It exists, as does all true healing, at the intersection of love and justice. To acknowledge that we have been harmed by another but choose to let go of our resentment or wishes for retribution requires a high order of emotional and ethical maturity. It is a way of liberating ourselves from a sense of oppression and a hopeful statement of our capacity for change."