Fifty Things I Now Know to Be True

This week I turn 50. My gold­en jubilee birth­day sig­ni­fies that I am half a cen­tu­ry old. To cel­e­brate, here are 50 things I now know to be true.

1. Curiosity equals last­ing contentment.
2. I am nev­er as right as I think I am.
3. Don’t let the noise of your mind drown out the whis­pers of your heart.
4. The moment has three parts: the moment, my expe­ri­ence of the moment, and the sto­ry I tell myself about my expe­ri­ence of the moment. It’s the sto­ry that gets me into trouble.
5. Forgive peo­ple – and your­self – more eas­i­ly. Grudges make you small and mean. 
6. Pay atten­tion. Be aston­ished. Tell about it. ~Mary Oliver
7. Never check a bag. You need far less stuff than you think. 
8. Yoga just might be the per­fect move­ment prac­tice. It strength­ens your bones and mus­cles and improves the range of motion in every joint. It helps you chill out and builds a brain that defaults more eas­i­ly to com­pas­sion and gratitude. 
9. (Try to) wor­ry only about what you can control.
10. Being on time is respectful.
11. Surround your­self with peo­ple who are inter­est­ed and interesting. 
12. Be a bet­ter listener.
13. Go to bed early.
14. Don’t dis­count the pow­er of just start­ing. Momentum builds nat­u­ral­ly. You can’t steer a parked car. 
15. Carve out time for silence every day.
16. A per­fect glim­mer hap­pens every win­ter when the sun streams through the stu­dio win­dow and warms your skin after days of bleak, gray driz­zle. Linger in that sun­beam. Chase it around the floor all day.
17. The love and joy you receive from your pets out­weigh the destruc­tion to your house. The cats will scratch the fur­ni­ture. The dogs will get the rugs mud­dy and chew holes in your socks. No amount of vac­u­um­ing will ever keep up with the shedding. 
18. Compliment and thank strangers. Tell the sec­re­tary at the car deal­er­ship what a plea­sure she was to deal with. She doesn’t hear it enough. Tell your wait­er you love his hair­cut. He doesn’t hear that enough either.
19. Who you are is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
20. A good declut­ter­ing purge is mag­ic for a bad mood.
21. Your black cash­mere turtle­neck is time­less. Never get rid of it. (see footnote*) 
22. Set your phone down and look up more often. Clouds have so many good things to say.
23. Take off your habit gog­gles as often as pos­si­ble to expe­ri­ence the mun­dane and tak­en-for-grant­ed with new awareness. 
24. Eat more protein.
25. Normalize talk­ing about men­tal health. 
26. The moment before com­plete sur­ren­der is when I grip the hardest.
27. Asking for the help I need is a strength.
28. You don’t need more clothes. Work on get­ting out of debt.
29. Make your part­ner laugh. 
30. Loud laugh­ter and soft rain are the two best sounds in the world.
31. Less Netflix, more reading.
32. Go out­side every day, no mat­ter the weather.
33. Beauty feeds your soul. Linger in the glimmers.
34. You can­not find sta­bil­i­ty by look­ing for sta­bil­i­ty. You find it by set­tling into instability. 
35. You can­not prac­tice detach­ment. You can only show our mind the suf­fer­ing that attach­ment creates.
36. Expect mir­a­cles and they show up more often.
37. No one wins by my play­ing small.
38. A lit­tle Botox goes a long way. But a lit­tle makes a huge difference.
39. I will not say yes when my heart says no. ~ Courtney Carver
40. Have a finan­cial goal that you work towards every month. 
41. Order the pas­ta. Your worth is not direct­ly tied to your waist cir­cum­fer­ence. And there is no num­ber on a scale worth a life with­out fresh pas­ta. Nourishment goes beyond the food we put into our bodies.
42. Be the woman that cel­e­brates women. We can­not burn the patri­archy down by using oth­er women as kindling.**
43. Wear more sun­screen. While I will nev­er regret the time I spent in the sun, I regret not wear­ing more sunscreen.
44. Sometimes we have to get out of align­ment with the world to get into align­ment with our soul.
45. My brain pro­duces around 700 new neu­rons every day. Use them wisely. 
46. I can be a ther­mome­ter or ther­mo­stat. A ther­mome­ter reacts to every­thing around it. With a ther­mo­stat, the envi­ron­ment shifts to sup­port it.
47. Be will­ing to be changed by every­one you meet.
48. Money doesn’t make you hap­py, but not hav­ing enough mon­ey can make you very unhap­py. You need enough mon­ey to afford your house, car, read­ing habit, occa­sion­al trav­el, and insurance.
49.  Our bod­ies are incred­i­bly wise. Listen to the whis­pers of your body. Because you know. You always know.
50. Growing old is a privilege.

*Since writ­ing this, I sad­ly find the need to edit #19 to Your black cash­mere turtle­neck is time­less. Never loan it to your daugh­ter because she will put it in the wash­ing machine. Cashmere. In the wash­ing machine. It will be ruined, and you will ques­tion your par­ent­ing skills and also want to mur­der your stu­pid offspring.

**Exceptions to this rule include but are not nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.