One: Find your voice. Know that not all languages contain words. Your voice could be music, it could be dance. It will be what expresses you most sincerely. Your voice is an art. If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.
Two: Remember that you are an artist, regardless of how constantly the world will try to drive it out of you, or how a “real job” will try to bury the part of you that communicates your feelings when language fails. You are an artist, whether it is with food or building robots. You will know your medium the instant you realize how in love you are with what it brings out of you.
Three: Apologize. You will not always be right. You will not always be wrong. You will hopefully always be learning. Atonement is a sacrifice of pride. Explanation of why you did what you did or said what you said will not vindicate you. If the cost to heal someone is only your pride, then apologize, and be grateful that you received peace at such a bargain.
Four: Forgive. Realize that some people are still learning. If forgiveness is not possible, the think of everything you have ever wanted to be forgiven for but weren’t. Hold that uneasiness in your mind until you feel your desire for absolution becoming a wish. Realize you can grant this wish for others. If you are waiting for forgiveness, be prepared to wait. Be prepared to stand in the path of time and wither. Respect that forgiveness is difficult. Not all trespassers are equal, and not everyone will heal according to your schedule.
Five: Accept that farting is funny. Granted, not always appropriate and sometimes unpleasant. But if you cannot laugh, if you are more offended by a fart than by a war, famine, political corruption, deforestation, racism, sexism, classism, the wrongfully imprisoned, the treatment of women, the foreclosing on homes while bank’s debts are forgive. If a fart offends you more than any of that, then you are not a person and cannot be helped. Join a cult. Have some Kool Aid.
Six: Know that love is a vulnerability but not a weakness. Love is the volunteer in you that raises its hand and steps forward without needing to be rewarded. Love is a currency that functions in reverse, because the only way to be wealthy with it is to give more of it away.
Seven: Don’t laugh to fit in. Laughter should be honest. If there is no sincerity in your joy then your happiness will be a forgery that fools only yourself.
Eight: Do not fear to be hated. But be cautious towards those inhabited by hate. You will be hated. But, regardless of who you are, what you say, or what you do, you will be hated for your successes or your failures, for good looks or bad looks, for intelligence or stupidity. Hate is the child of the hater, nurtured by the beliefs that it’s fed, you will often have no control over what you are hared for. Know that antipathy becomes the master of its owner. Know that if you are going to be hated regardless of who you are, then be fearless enough to be who you want to be. Hate is no more eloquently articulated than in the poetry of the expression “Not your fucking problem”.
Nine: Try. The tiniest dream that you try to make happen is worth more than the biggest dream you never attempt.
Ten: Be savagely thankful, and continuously in awe of the power you possess. You are alive. Inside of an endless cosmos with the freedom that shines brightest in the dark. Choices. Your choices belong to you so intimately that they will never leave you. They, unlike the changing nature of love, where the failing machinery of our bodies will never abandon you to time. Good or bad, they will stay always. An antique that shows the future who you were and what you stood for. So know that what you choose to stand for is what will inform you of what you’ve chosen to stand against, so stand. Let each foot crash land into what you believe, and plant them there firmly so they may take root in your convictions. And stand.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
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