“It’s gonna change, baby doll
Yoko Ono
It’s gonna change, honey ball
It’s gonna change, sugar cane
It’s gonna change, sweetie legs”
This is a test but so is everything.
Everyone is watching you and everyone will judge you and you have to make peace with it.
Also, no one is watching you and no one cares and you have to make peace with that, too.
You will always displease some people.
In the end, you are watching and judging and ignoring and being displeased, too. It evens out.
Give up on pursuing happiness as quickly as possible. Seek to live, instead. It’s quite the experience, but it will include much, much more than happiness.
Give yourself comfort in small things and challenge in big things. Or maybe the opposite.
Pick 3 skills from the list below and master them as quickly as possible:
- how to defuse an argument
- how to make a Venn diagram
- how to not take everything personally
- how to be running up that hill
- how to stop trying
- how to keep trying
- how to properly use the words effect and affect
- how to make a dent in the universe
- how to roast a marshmallow perfectly the way you like it
- how to forgive yourself
- how to make a great sandwich
- how to ask questions
- how to make numbered lists
- how to write in cursive (A fading skill! Grab it now before it’s gone. Or don’t because literally no one cares.)
- how to find your people
- how to make a great lemon dessert
- how to ignore lists like this
Alternately, memorize a poem instead. It will be more beautiful, and just as useful. Perhaps more useful.
Who knows how reality will continue to develop?
When you can’t be prepared, be prepared to find poetry in the chaos. Find your kind of poetry—whether it’s in words or music or the ocean or motion or a really great sandwich—and look for it everywhere. It will always be there, waiting to be found by only you in a mysterious serendipitous infinite game of cosmic hide-and-seek.