What I have learned.

File: anigif_enhanced-11374-1398168998-17.gif (874KB, 500x700px) Image search: [Google]

874KB, 500x700px

I have been alive for 40 years.

It has been 22 years since I was in high school, and still I think about those happy days every day. My friends, who were yet to be ruined by drugs or by drink or divorce or by death or the myriad failures that can happen to you in Life.

How much I wish I could go back to those days.
How grateful I am to have found myself where I am now.

A wife whom I love with all my heart and who, stunningly, loves me too. A son whom I love more than I ever thought I could love someone. A daughter on the way. Truly God has blessed me.

I think I am going to die. Soon. But then I think 40 year old men think about things like that. When I was 20, I was invincible.

I am no wise man.

I learned almost every important lesson in my life by making a painful mistake. It is like learning how not to touch a hot stove by burning yourself.

These are things other people told me that stood the test of time.

1. Mark Twain was right. The secret of life is to fall in love young, and stay there.

2. Change your location and you change. If you ever feel like you're in a rut, or are just unhappy in life - contact a recruiter, get a job in another state and buy a bus ticket. Seriously. Move somewhere nobody knows and you get to be the version of yourself that makes you happy. People call it running away from your problems. Fuck them. Run. Run and feel the freedom.

3. Your heart is going to give out. This is a weird one. When your young, your heart beats strong and it gives you some kind of strong passion. As you get older, the muscles in your heart give out, and with it go your passion, your bravery, your ambition, your strength. EVERYTHING must happen when you're young. It's a physical thing. I shouldn't have drunk so much alcohol

4. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the presence of action, when experiencing fear. A better way to put it would be to say,