On the day that I was born, the life expectancy of a white male born in the United States was 65 years. So for me, every day for the last ten years has amounted to cheating death. But how much longer can I get away with this?
In case the answer to that question turns out to be not long, I’m taking this opportunity to write down some of the important things I’ve learned since I got here in the hope that they may help others safely navigate and thoroughly enjoy their lives. These are the things my life taught me:
– They’re lying to you.
– 99 percent of what happens to you during your life – good and bad – is the product of luck. Don’t take yourself or your life too seriously.
– Never take the first table they offer you in a restaurant, or the first room they offer you at a hotel.
– Live your life in chapters. Every ten or fifteen years, stop what you’re doing, move someplace new, and do something entirely different. Write a new chapter in your life. This is the formula for an interesting, fulfilling, and enjoyable life.
– Make your bed. Do the dishes.
– “Throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbors.”
– Do the hard things. “The hard is what makes it great.”
– “It was the leaving that saved me.”
– “Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around.”
– Live the best life you can by living the life that brings you the most happiness. Life has no meaning. There’s no reason why you’re here. So just enjoy yourself while you have this life.
– Remember what things were like for you before you were born? That’s what they’ll be like for you after you die.
– While you’re still young, ask yourself this question: “What shall I be in this world?” Once you know the answer to that question, go out and be that person, go out and live that life. Don’t be the person others want you to be, don’t live the life others want you to live.
– Dying people most often mention their regrets. Most of those regrets come down to: “I did what others wanted me to do, not what I wanted to do.”
– Everything they want you to do – get a job, get married, have children – will make you miserable. You’ll hate your coworkers, the company that employs you will exploit you, you’ll have no control over your life, the work they make you do will be soul destroying, and you’ll want to be valued and respected but won’t be. You’ll marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons and eventually divorce. You’ll start out thinking that you’re raising children but you’ll soon find that you’re raising something which will seem to you like an alien lifeform.
– Work for yourself.
– 99 percent of all jobs are awful/soul destroying/humiliating.
– The most important decision you make in your life is not whether to go to college or what college to go to or what to major in or where to live or what career to choose or which job to take. It’s with whom you choose to spend your life — if anyone. Choose someone you enjoy talking to and who makes you laugh. If you can’t find that person, choose someone rich.
– Never share a bathroom with anyone.
– Never get a puppy. Adopt a mature dog so that you know what you’ll be living with for the next 12 years. The same goes for selecting a mate. Never date anyone younger than 25. Never marry your high school sweetheart. Marry an adult so that you know what you’ll be living with for the next 12 years — if that.
– Having children in the 21st Century is cruel to them, and the one thing that will make it most difficult for you to have your best possible life.
– If you do have children, don’t give them names that you like. Give them names that they’ll like.
– Starting in high school, learn to be a compelling public speaker and a great writer.
– Never check a bag.
– When something goes wrong, take the blame. When something goes right, give someone else the credit. (I learned this running my own business, but it applies to other relationships as well.)
– It’s our promises that hold our society together. Keep yours.
– It’s never just one. There are always other victims.
– People are fundamentally evil. It’s in our DNA.
– The way the human race has organized itself since the agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago has been an abject failure. There is no reason why, other than selfishness, we shouldn’t admit failure and start over.
– If you think the United States Constitution is the greatest legal document ever written, you haven’t read it. It’s rubbish.
– The guide makes or breaks the trip. Go where the great guides are. Related: The professor makes or breaks the course. In college, don’t take courses. Take great professors.
– It’s not a mistake if it’s something you did consciously and deliberately. It’s a failure and possibly a crime.
– The stock market is not designed to help you get rich. It’s designed to insure that those who are already very rich get even richer — usually at your expense.
– I made my fortune advising big financial institutions on their investments. That experience taught me this: Don’t save your money, don’t invest your money. Spend your money or give your money away. Use your money to make yourself and those you care about happy.
– Be generous.
– Keep moving.
– Live.
– No one knows anything — including me.
