The Most Important Life Lessons for Contentment

Life’s lessons are difficult. They come with pain, and sometimes, regret. But ultimately, to live life with content, and enough-ness, there are a few things we can each remember.

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned during my own (longish-by-some-standards, shorter-by-others’) life.

The Most Important Life Lessons for Contentment

You’re never utterly alone, even when you feel as though you are. There are people who will respect your ideas. Who will respect and admire you-ness.

They’re out there. Find them, even though finding them is hard.

Discouraging, even. Keep trying. You’ll find them.

You matter. In all the ways. Your opinion matters. Your ideas matter.

You deserve to have mind-blowing sex. Let loose, and find a partner that you don’t have to apologize to for whatever inhibits you. Physical bliss matters. If you’re not into sex, find physical bliss in other ways.

Lift weights, slowly, and feel which muscles are working. Love that your body is powerful and imperfect.

Embrace your goofiness. Be unafraid in the faces of others. Who are they but other versions of yourself, living their fears and hopes and ideas?

Don’t fear other people’s thoughts about you.

Their thoughts are about them. Your life needs to be about you, and the fact is, they’re likely experiencing the same self-doubt, and wondering what you’re thinking about them.

We’re all human.

We’re flawed. And, our lives behind closed doors are ours and it doesn’t matter what the neighbors think if we’re living our best lives.

Live your best life.

If you and your children love to dance on the stairs before dinner? Dance on the stairs. The neighbors may complain, but that’s their reality. If they can hear you, and that bothers them at 4:00pm, they shouldn’t have moved so close to other people.

Maybe, don’t dance on the stairs after 8:30pm though. Because respecting other people matters, too.

Your ideas are amazing, even when they’re the dumbest, weirdest ones ever. They’re yours, and nobody else’s.

Act on your ideas. Wildly, because nobody else will.

You’re the only one that can give you joy.

Find your joy.

Find what matters to you.

If you love running, run.

If you hate running, because your boobs might knock you out, find something else.

Sit outside on the porch stoop, and wonder about the lives lived in the cars driving by.

Wonder about your life.

Imagine the best life you can live.

What should be cut, so that you can live your best life?

What should be added?

Do you need more time with your children at the playground?

Do you need more time without your children?

Nobody can give you what you need most, better than you can.

I asked Tucker tonight what the most important thing he’s learned in life is.

“What matters most is on the inside,” he (basically) said. We talk about this a lot. He worries about his speech. About what his friends think of him.

Just like each of us do. We walk into a room and wonder whether the people we meet will think we’re too fat. Too old. Too dressed up. Not dressed up enough. Too young. Too all-the-things.

(Also, if you’re wondering why he’s “Happy Tater” above, although this is on my YouTube channel, he has one now, and is known as Happy Tater. He doesn’t have many videos up and they’re um…. well anyway. He’d love some likes, if you’re bored). 

What other people think of us doesn’t matter.

Most of the people we want to impress today, with our cool hairstyles, our fashionable jeans, or our perfect bodies?

We’re not going to be in the room together when we’re each dying. While loved ones may hold our hands, and our hearts, the most important thing in the room with us while we lie dying will be what we did.

Who we were. How we made other people feel.

What we’ll need to let go of is regret, and I promise, you won’t regret what a neighbor thought of you going to the bus stop in sweatpants.

You’ll only regret not living.

Now. Tomorrow. It’s never too late to start, if you’re behind.

The most important life lesson is that we live life in a way that we won’t regret. Live.

Express yourself. Rage, resist, and hold.

Laugh. Love freely and deeply.

Be you. Completely.

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This has been a Finish the Sentence Friday post. Each week, Kenya of Sporadically Yours and I give you a prompt and a theme. This week’s prompt is simply to finish the sentence “When it comes to life’s lessons…”

PS – writing is funny. Until about 20 minutes ago, I thought I had nothing for this. I’d resigned myself to re-publish a post about wishing I were younger, with funny drawing and an alien visit. But once I gave up, I found I had so much to say. Again. Writing is weird.