"You will regret the small thing you didn't say for the rest of your life. Say thank you."

Dear Sugar,

I read your column religiously. I'm twenty-two. From what I can tell by your writing, you're in your early forties. My question is short and sweet: What would you tell your twentysomething self if you could talk to her now?

Love,
Seeking Wisdom

Dear Seeking Wisdom,

Stop worrying about whether you're fat. You're not fat. Or rather, you're sometimes a little bit fat, but who gives a shit? There is nothing more boring and fruitless than a woman lamenting the fact that her stomach is round. Feed yourself. Literally. The sort of people worthy of your love will love you more for this, sweet pea.  [...]

There are some things you can't understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It's good you've worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness. [...]

Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. Your are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday You don't know what it is yet.

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give in. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

One hot afternoon during the era in which you've gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin, you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She'll offer you one of the balloons, but you won't take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You're wrong. You do.

Your assumption about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naive pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you. [...]

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people's diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. Those things are you becoming.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that saved you months to buy, don't look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don't hold it up and say it's longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn't say for the rest of your life.

Say thank you.

Yours,
Sugar

From  Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

"what people say doesn't mean much. It's what they do that predicts thefuture."

"A fifth lesson is that what goes right is more important than what goes wrong, and that it is the quality of child's total experience, not any particular trauma or any particular relationship, that exerts the clearest influence on adult psychology. [...]

A sixth lesson is that if you follow lives long enough, they change and so do factors that affect healthy adjustment. Our journeys through this world are filled with discontinuities. Nobody in the Study was doomed at the outset, but nobody had it made, either. Inheriting the genes for alcoholism can turn the most otherwise blessed golden boy into a trainwreck. Conversely, an encounter with a very dangerous disease liberated the pitiful young Dr. Camille from life of dependency and loneliness." (P.52)

"And we found that the fifty-nine men with the warmest childhoods made 50 percent more money than the sixty-three men with the bleakest childhoods." (113)

"Remember, Garrick was only the first of the men to reach ninety-five [...]. Can we learn anything from Daniel Garrick's life about the keys to graceful aging? [...] He certainly didn't follow most of the conventional "rules" for long life. His parents were not long-lived

. [..] He didn't really start to exercise until he was almost sixty. He smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for twenty years, and nine pipes a day for decades after that. During his sixties, he drank enough that he and his future wife worried about it. [... But] Remember, way back in college he had bicycled 5 miles back and forth to class after being up all night and had gotten top marks for being "well integrated" and "self-starting," both traits associated with longevity in the Study. 

From the very beginning Garrick had a quality of indomitability, and maybe that was really what enabled him to live so long. Nobody in the Grant Study waited longer or worked harder than he did to get a college education. [...] He never gave up, and he never have up hope." (239-240)

"As I keep reminding myself, what people say doesn't mean much. It's what they do that predicts the future. It was the facts of people's long-term love relationships, not their belief systems, that showed us what we needed to know first about their capacity to love, and then about their mental health." (353)

"This extraordinary telescope has brought great joy and meaning into my life. [...] And I become more and more aware that the Study, and the work we've done with it, has encouraged other people to think about their own lives and the lives of others. Not statistically, perhaps, but with a little more curiosity and a little more interest and a little more kindness. And how can that hurt?" (370)

- My new all-time favorite book. 

Triumphs of Experience: The Men of The Harvard Grant Study by George E. Vaillant