5 Painful Life Lessons I’d Wish I Learned Sooner

My loss is your gain

1. Getting dumped is just like getting fired.

Let me tell you a few things about at-will romance.

You might think everything is fine and dandy. You look around and smile with satisfaction.

“This is the life,” you think quietly to yourself.

You’re living the life of your dreams. You are, in one word, happy.

Then, one day, you and your partner are sitting on the couch watching a re-run of your favorite sitcom.

“Let’s break up,” she says abruptly.

You press the mute button on the TV remote. Did you hear that correctly?

“What?” you ask with a puzzled look on your face.

“I’ve met someone else.”

And just like that, your life changes for the worse. The life of your dreams is no more. Welcome to the dark side. You now have clouds of doom over your head wherever you go.

It takes a long time for you to get back on your feet.

2. Your children just want you to show up.

You’re fooling yourself if you think being a workaholic will make your children happy.

“I’m doing this for them,” you might say.

Wrong.

Admit it. You’re doing this for yourself. You have inner demons, and instead of confronting them, you choose to run away by working an extra 10–20 hours every week. Thoughtful children don’t want the latest gadgets and gizmos. They want you.

They want you to be there during their first ballet recital.

They want you to be there when they finally walk across the stage at their college graduation.

They want you.

3. There are only a handful of people who genuinely care about you.

For most of us, our family and best friends are the only people who give us their time. They answer our calls and texts as soon as possible.

Everyone else is a mixed bag. Some people are kind. Others ignore our calls and mute our messages.

In a way, it makes sense. If you’re not close with someone, then you wouldn’t want to give them too much of your time. You have sh*t to do, so the people in your way better scatter.

Still, sometimes, I feel like the world can be very impersonal. Is it simply a case of “Me” syndrome? Maybe that’s just capitalism. The system creates self-interested individuals who hustle for the sake of hoarding limited resources.

4. You have to help yourself.

As a child, you are told what to do by people who love you.

• No dessert until you eat broccoli.
• No video games until you finish your homework.

As an adult, you can drown yourself in vices and no one will stop you. You can go to Las Vegas on Christmas Eve and gamble away your life’s savings. You can take shots until you get a hangover that you didn’t think was possible.

You quickly realize that self-discipline is not only nice to have but necessary if you want to become a well-functioning human being. Self-discipline might just save your life one day.

5. Don’t take your healthy years for granted.

“Retirement is for the young.”

I hear this saying repeated by members of the FIRE movement (financial independence, retire early). People want to retire as soon as possible because they don’t know how many healthy years they have left. Tomorrow may not come.

There are so many hobbies and experiences that you want to try.

Will your body cooperate?

Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?

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