Quarter Life Crisis Countdown: 25 Words to Live By

I'm posting a list of 25 items each day (more like every other day) leading up to my birthday at the end of the month to celebrate 25 years of gathered wisdom and useless information.

Growing up one receives a lot of different advice. Most of it is not worth much, I find. The following are phrases/ideas I return to again and again in my day-to-day life:

1. "Life is what happens when you've made other plans." (John Lennon)

2. "Different strokes for different folks." (hmmm, Sly Stone?) or "It takes all types"

3. "If you want something done right, then you've got to do it yourself." (my mother)

4. "If you are truly present in every moment, you can experience immortality." (My professor, Rachel Crawford, said this to us in class, although she was quoting someone else. I don't remember who that was.)

5. "You can't always get what you want, and if you try sometimes you get what you need." (The Rolling Stones)

6. "Happiness is a clean home." (my mother)

7. "It's better to leave wanting more." (my mother)

8. "Humor is the flexibility of the soul." (me)

9. "Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans." (Max Ehrmann)

10. "Only you can experience the absurdity of your own life." (me)

11. "Things do not change; we change." (Henry David Thoreau)

12. "Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative." (T.S. Eliot)

13. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." (Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr)

14. "Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance." (Dave Barry)

15. "The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

16. "Everything in moderation."

17. "Admitting you are lost is the first step to finding your way." (me)

18. "Love is just bodies and words." (Ken Taylor)

19. "People don't get into trouble for telling the truth; they get into trouble for the lies they tell to avoid telling the truth." (Jonathan Mahrer)

20. "Not all who wander are lost." (J.R.R. Tolkien)

21. "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." (T.S. Eliot)

22. "The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know." (Socrates)

23. "I do what I want." (Bailey McAllister)

24. "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are." (Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin)

25. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Attributed mostly to Jesus, although I just remember my father saying it)

26. "This, too, shall pass." (Persian proverb) — including this nasty fever I'm currently suffering.