18 Things Every Person Must Do in Their Lifetime

10/7/13 18 Things Every Person Must Do In Their Lifetime — thoughtcatalog.com — Readability

www.readability.com/articles/bswzebgu 1/4

thoughtcatalog.com

18 Things Every Person Must DoIn Their Lifetime

by Brianna Wiest • original (http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/18-things-every-person-must-do-in-their-

l ifetime/)

1. Accept that there will be whole swaths of you that will always seem like a

mystery. There will be things that may never make sense. There will be questions

that may always go unanswered. Despite this, you must stop questioning the

steady sense of knowing your body somehow delivers to you anyway. Even when

logic would seem to defeat it, and your mind is combatting it furiously. That

knowing is your truth. That knowing is what you have to act on without sound

reason. We call this the leap of faith. Learn to take it.

2. Learn what it means to have radical empathy. Realize that underneath it all we

are the same. We have all suffered. We have all known loss, heartbreak, grief,

sadness, tragedy and misfortune, all in the uniqueness of our own experiences. You

may not know what someone’s story is but you do know what it feels like to have a

knife going through you when you lose someone you love. What it’s like to be

completely alone and thwarted from society. You always have the ability to

understand people at that very raw, human level. It’s only a matter of how much

you’re willing to see yourself in them.

3. If you love someone, freaking tell them. Write it on notes next to their bed and

in journals that they’ll one day find and interrupt their sentences with it if you have

to. There is nothing more important than being vocal about loving someone. You

want to know the truth? We are all starving for love and acceptance and if you

love someone you need to tell them that without being afraid that they don’t love

you as much, or at all. That’s not love. That’s greed. That’s neediness. That’s the

desire for affirmation and attention. Love, in it’s purest, untapped form, does not

hinge on the requirement that they’ll love you in return.

4. Let loving someone or not loving someone be enough in deciding whether or not

you want to be with them. The rest are augmentable details. But that core is

unchanging.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/18-things-every-person-must-do-in-their-lifetime/

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/18-things-every-person-must-do-in-their-lifetime/



5. Have a verifiably effective plan for coping with emotional pain. Sometimes

wicked anxiety crops up out of nowhere. Some days we’ll be just going along our

way and then all of a sudden all of the issues of our childhood come sweeping back

through us like we never grew out of them and we panic and hold onto them

because we don’t know how to let go because it seems like doing so will give them

the power to sneak up on us again. In these moments, you need a friend to call

and a shoulder to lean on and a playlist to blast and a journal to write in. And

somewhere in that journal, you need to have written: “this too shall pass.”

6. Stop trying to convince people to love you. With what you wear, in sullied

comments that dig for their appreciation, in how your interests have forcefully

evolved to complement or mirror those of whom you are so desperately trying to

win over. Stop doing things so you’ll be regarded highly in other people’s opinions.

That won’t make them love you more. It will only drive you farther away from

yourself.

7. Learn to say sorry and mean it. Realize that what most wisdom stems from is

forgiveness: for ourselves, for others, for what happened and for what’s missing,

for what’s unstable and what’s gone unacknowledged. Realize that you won’t

always receive an apology and you still may have to find forgiveness anyway.

Realize that’s the only way to understand just how powerful a genuine apology can

be.

8. Write lists and make goals and always keep yourself moving toward something.

Joy is in the moment, but hope is in tomorrow. It’s a fine balance that takes

lifetimes to perfect. Don’t feel bad if you err toward one mindset or another. Just

don’t forget that when you do fall too deeply into focusing on today or tomorrow,

that you always have the other option.

9. Accept that while most things end up okay, not everything does. Some things

may dig themselves into you and you’ll carry them through your whole life.

Sometimes things go mysteriously unresolved. Sometimes you’ll fight hard and

lose. Sometimes you’ll be so far in denial that acceptance isn’t something you start

to approach for years. It’s important to be okay with not being okay. It’s part of the

human condition. It’s very beautiful if you let it show you a deeper route into

yourself.

10. Stand up for what’s just. Stand up for love and stand up for equality and

respect. Don’t be a bystander in someone else’s life but more importantly, don’t be a

bystander in your own.



11. Let yourself be useless sometimes. You can’t spend your entire life reveling in

achievement. In fact, you’ll spend most of your days on your knees grappling with

what you’re most passionate about. You’ll turn up on the other side eventually, but

not without days upon days of climbing.

12. Say thank you even when you don’t feel gratitude. It’s not that you shouldn’t

feel it, but sometimes you just might not. But saying “thank you” is one of those

rare things in which you do entirely for the other person. Saying thank you doesn’t

help you. It helps the other person want to give again. You won’t understand what

“thank you” means until it’s given to you after you’ve truly given to someone else.

Foster that for other people and keep the cycle going. It will come back to you

eventually.

13. Never go into anything thinking you are entitled to it because you are talented,

because you have suffered for it or because it’s time for the universe to cater to

your needs just this once. This will never be the truth.

14. Buy a notebook. Write down what you want. Write down what hurts you.

Show it to someone you love. Save it for your children. Burn it in your backyard.

Either way, go to bed knowing that in some way, those things are out of you.

15. Know the difference between the limits that withhold you and the limits that

are crucial for you to obey. Draw your lines accordingly. Live your life around

them.

16. Learn to comfort someone. Head nods and “I understands” won’t mean jack

shit when someone is really in the depths of something. If you love someone, know

when it’s time to order their favorite food and hold their hand the way they like

and respond in the way they are looking to be responded to. Sometimes it’s with

empathy and understanding, sometimes it’s with problem-solving mechanisms

and jokes to lighten things. You won’t know unless you know someone

thoroughly. There are reasons people don’t just look to anybody when they’re really

in need. These are them.

17. Learn to enjoy talking about something that doesn’t come at the expense of

someone else.

18. Realize how important it is to mourn properly. This means letting yourself be a

whole big ball of effing mess now and again. Things and people will phase in and

out as scheduled. You can’t keep holding on for their return because most often,

they won’t come. But that withholding will shape you, and it will shape you

through your own self-induced pain and suffering. If you don’t want that to be

your story, write it a different way. It starts with saying goodbye to what’s not

meant for us and what’s left inexplicably. Your quality of life will completely



depend on how well you embrace this. Choose wisely.

Cataloged in

Or iginal URL:http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/18-things-every -person-must-do-in-their-lifetime/

Documents

18 Things Every Person Must Do in Their Lifetime