2. It is okay to not know. Everyone always despises the phrase, “I don’t know” but no one tells you that it is okay to not know. The becoming is more important than the being, anyways.
3. If someone ever makes you feel less, in any way, you have every right to walk away. You have every right to cut out toxic people in your life. To close the door on people who make you feel bad about who you are or what you stand for. Friends don’t tear down, they build up.
4. Loss is always going to happen. Just like paint will always chip and rain will always fall, loss will always be part of life. No matter how much I don’t like it, or avoid it, it is going to walk my way at several times in my life. Learn to embrace it and learn to get closure.
5. Give yourself a chance. Stop saying, “I don’t think I can” or “But what if I am not able to?” and give yourself a chance. This may be cliche, but try to believe in yourself. When you get older, your knees won’t work the same and you won’t have the best memory, and you are going to wish you’d given yourself a chance years sooner.
6. Fall in love. Don’t be guarded before you fall in love. You could fall in love three times and still not find the right one, but none of it is going to make “the one” matter less. Don’t fall into that idea that your first love has to be your best love. Fall in love as many times as it naturally happens.
7. Firsts are going to be messy. First loves, first kisses, first dates, first failed tests, first college class, first time you drive a car, first time you ride a plane - first times were made to be imperfect. Just because it’s messy and all over the place, doesn’t mean it can’t be good or worthwhile.
8. You want another scoop of ice-cream? Go get it. Get three more scoops of ice-cream if that is what you want. “Fat” is not the opposite of beautiful and it is not the opposite of happy. Don’t let anyone tell you that your body type isn’t beautiful. Beauty is a social construct, create your own, become your own.
9. Let yourself be alone. Loneliness is not a bad thing. It is healthy and normal. Everyone needs to spend a good portion of their life alone. We learn who we are when we are alone; life is less crowded and more clear when we are alone.
10. If you aren’t happy where you are, change it. Quit your job, move, become a vegetarian, get a new hobby, pick up an old hobby, whatever you do - make sure it benefits you. Life is too short to not be alive, to not be passionate, and overflowing.
—Amanda Helm, Ten Things I Learned before 20
"If your life is not quite working out like you think it should, have the courage to admit it is not because of other people. It is not because there are unknown forces out there which are conspiring against you. It is not because for some unknown reason (and even being unknown you still accept as fact) it was just not meant to be for you. It is soooooo not, not meant to be. Admit you are where you are because of you, because you are not doing what you need to do. Maybe you don't know what you need to do or maybe you do but you are afraid. I know. I've been there. I've used all those excuses in the past. When I finally took full responsibility, my world became truly blessed."
“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live..... with
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
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