8 Rules To Honor For The One Life You Get

i want you to imagine yourself at 80 or 90, somewhere serene, looking back at your life.

what would that person want you to do today?

what would they want you to have recorded? called? created? stopped worrying about, when you had the time to stop worrying about it?

i’ve found eight of them throughout my life tucked behind the lessons of my parents, grandparents, my friends, who said the right things at the right moments.

these are the eight things i actually collected from all that time spent listening.

i don’t want this to be rules for how to be someone successful.

consider these rules for making a life into something you can actually be happy with as your own.

the most mundane moments are often the most sacred.

and we don’t realize that we’re living through the moments we’ll want to revisit until they’re already gone.

every year, i hear someone say it, “i miss 2016” “i miss 2010, when everything was simpler” and ten years from now, those same people will be saying “man, i miss 2026” “i miss 2030”

we live in this perpetual cycle. constantly manufacturing nostalgia for the past while completely failing to appreciate the present the exact same way in real time, as it's happening.

this is your life, man. this is the time.

the past years were great. this year is great. the future years will be great.

but that same cycle we’ve trapped ourselves in is the thing that’s stealing all the moments we want to revisit from the present

your parents telling you that same stupid story for the thousandth time, your mom laughing in the kitchen for no particular reason, your friend hanging out doing nothing with you, your dog barking at some unseen force outside, driving somewhere with the windows down at night, your childhood bedroom, exactly as it was.

they all seemed perfectly mundane when we were inside them, the kind of things that don’t invoke any deep or reflective thought when you’re in the moment.

the kind of things we barely register as occuring

but as we grow older and we leave them behind, we realize how special they really were

how much would you pay to go back and sit in that kitchen for five more minutes?

so here are the eight things.

eight particular things i think you should actually do, before the moment you’re living in becomes a moment you’re wishing you could revisit.

"It is not the length of life, but depth of life." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

there’s something strange in the makeup of humans. we intrinsically have some desire to leave evidence that we existed.

i’ve talked about the psychological concept before. it’s called terror management theory.

basically a large part of human behavior is deeply driven by an unconscious fear of mortality.

and i think people always take this and assume that it’s the idea of trying to build something that lasts generations.

that new innovative idea that changes the world or building that massive company that changes lives.

all noble pursuits, don’t get me wrong.

but i think there’s more practical things to do, that in some ways are more important for your soul.

plant trees, write books, make music, sculpt, paint, create art, donate to a cause that continues long after you’re gone

it doesn’t have to be something big. something that will make an impact on humanity at large.

it can be something small and tucked away. something only discovered by your children or grandchildren or maybe someone who found it in your things and reads it, wondering if it was somebody’s father, or mother, or grandfather.

my mom gave me a box a while back of my grandma’s things and it had a book in it with her writing in it.

her notes and journals and random ideas and i was struck by how much of her mind i could see in that one little book. how much she thought about that particular hobby of hers, how much i recognized in her handwriting, since mine was so similar to hers.

i almost asked my mom “when did i write this” thinking maybe it was something i’d written as a kid that had somehow gotten in with her things. and that’s the beauty of this particular rule, right?

she’s been gone for a while, but a part of her mind, her thoughts, her personality is in a book in my possession and it hits me in the gut on some random afternoon half a decade after she died.

and also we live in an amazing time where we have something called the internet.

think about the difference between physical and digital legacies, something you make with your hands versus something you publish online.

something handmade might last a while but something published has a much longer lifespan, sitting on the internet long after you’re gone.

readable by someone who’s never met you.

when i started this publication, it was never with the intent of leaving behind some digital footprint for others to stumble across long after i’m gone.

it was more just a means to put my own thoughts out there, mostly just a dump for my own mind, for things i’ve thought and worked through and want to put out there for others to find and maybe work through with me.

who knows how long i’ll be writing this thing for.

either way, those things will outlive me, sitting on the internet for years and years and years after i’m gone.

and i think it’s neat to imagine some stranger stumbling across one of these particular posts 10 years from now and thinking “man, this is really something special”

the beauty of something that outlives you is that it doesn’t need you to stick around for it to continue.

it exists independent from you, and just by virtue of existing, makes the person who made it feel good, like they were here.

the aim is to make something that quietly reminds you, i was here.

we’ve gotten so caught up in taking pictures of everything, of making sure we have a permanent record of everything important in our lives, that we’ve forgotten to record the things that matter most.

sound.

the camera to me is genuinely one of the coolest inventions of all time.

the fact that we can capture a moment and hold on to it, look back on it in the future, and see it exactly as it was when we first saw it.

people thousands of years ago would have killed for the ability to capture a moment like that.

some emperor or pharaoh might have paid handsomely to have his child’s face immortalized in oil paint, so that it might outlive him and serve as a reminder of his son when he was young and handsome.

and now we have that same power in our pocket and rarely use it for anything besides food and landscapes.

so use that power.

record everything, not just the pretty things.

everything that makes up a moment, everything that makes up a person.

a photo captures the look of someone in a particular moment, but a recording captures everything else, the things that a photo just can’t convey.

the thing about memory is that it doesn’t work like a camera.

that every time you recall something, you’re re-recalling it, not remembering it as it actually happened.

and you’ll be surprised how quickly someone’s voice will start to fade if you only ever remember it from memory, even if you heard it a thousand times in your life.

don’t wait until a funeral to discover you only have photos of someone who’s no longer here.

record the voices of the people you love, your parents telling that same stupid story for the thousandth time, your brother being annoying, your lover telling you about something really cool, your kids being bad at pronouncing words.

record it all, because one day, you’ll wish you could go back and listen to it all again.

and i promise you, when you’re watching old home videos and hearing yourself talk, you’ll thank me for this one.

a photo shows you what someone looked like, but a recording shows you that they were real.

your last name is something of a relic, something strange and unimportant that you didn’t really have a say in

but you can trace it backward.

through your parents, through your grandparents, through old records, old jobs, old countries, old languages, old everything

you don’t need to become a genealogist and trace five hundred years of your ancestry for this one but you should acknowledge that this part of your name didn’t come from you, that it came from someone long dead who might not have been anyone special at the time .

whose name you’re likely using every day of your life.

part of it is simply the fact that it’s yours, you have to know it to feel whole in a way since psychologically we form our sense of self from the stories we tell, including the fact that we tell our history to ourselves.

cut that thread and a part of your self-awareness dies with it

so ask your parents. if they don’t know, ask your grandparents, while they can still answer. write it down, because here’s the depressing truth about this particular rule.

one day, you might be the only person left who knows where it came from.

it’s an important part of who we are as people.

something we use to identify ourselves, to attach ourselves to a family history that stretches far longer than we can possibly know or understand.

so why not know where it actually came from?

birthdays are strange things, the way we’ve built them around this one question.

what am i getting?

presents and attention and cake and everyone gathered around you, focusing on you and your needs for one day out of the year

and don’t get me wrong, your birthday is your day.

it’s important, it should be celebrated.

but i want you to spend one particular birthday doing something different, doing the thing you rarely do because it’s not really expected of you.

spend one birthday giving something away, giving your time or your attention or your presents.

take your parents/lover/siblings/friends/kids out to dinner.

do something nice for them, instead of the other way around on your special day.

there’s real science behind the fact that giving feels good, stimulating the same part of the brain as receiving strengthens the bonds between the people giving and the people receiving.

but there’s something else that happens when you do this.

when you spend one day out of the year treating someone else like they’re the one special person in the world, instead of treating yourself like you’re the one special person in the world.

it humbles you and puts you in a different headspace and that’s something you can’t quantify, only feel.

another year of life shouldn’t only be focused on what other people give you, but on what you give to other people.

"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." — Confucius

this rule is one of those strangely easy things that most people seem to avoid for no real reason.

compliment the barista at the coffee shop, tell the old man in the park that his dog is beautiful, tell your friend what you always appreciated about him or her, something you never really said before.

i know it can be difficult to do.

to approach a stranger and say something nice, but most of that difficulty is manufactured in your head.

you’re imagining the interaction through your own anxious filter, when in reality, the recipient might be carrying that kindness with them for the rest of their day or even for the rest of their life.

there’s a strange sort of ripple effect to this kind of thing.

something that can move outward in waves and influence the people around you in ways you can’t predict.

one stranger’s kindness can shift someone’s mood, which can in turn shift their behavior, which can then influence the next person they meet who might carry that positivity with them for the rest of their day.

it becomes a chain reaction.

and you’ll never see most of it because it’s all outside your perception but it’s all still there.

no less real for being unseen.

think about it from the other angle. about how that kindness affected you personally.

when it came from someone else, out of nowhere, unexpected and unplanned.

you remember it, don’t you? you replay it in your head and think about what it meant to you, disproportionately high compared to the moment itself.

you don’t need to change someone’s entire life to make this rule count. sometimes all it takes is a small shift to make a tuesday feel a little less gray.

i think it’s fair to say that most of us will never truly change someone’s entire life but everyone has the power to make it feel just a little better.

and i think it’s one of the best things you can do.

leaving behind some small kindness for the next person to carry with them even if you never know where it goes or who finds it.

this world is an interesting place.

in that we’re living in a time where every corner has already been mapped, photographed from orbit, turned into another dot on the map we stare at from our couches.

we’ve missed out on the era of discovery. where we had explorers who set sail into the unknown looking for something we couldn’t define, just because it was there.

and i think we’re already looking forward to the next era of that where we start pushing outward into the stars.

only to find ourselves equally incapable of reaching them at least for the time being

so explore the world around you while you’re still capable of doing so. while you’re still young and you have time

and no, it doesn’t have to involve fancy hotels or long treks.

of course you should do those things, when you can, because money and time are both finite resources that we should spend as we see fit.

but you don’t need to go overseas for this rule.

get off the beaten path, miss a turn on purpose, wander until you find a road instead of waiting for the road to find you.

explore the world around you, the places you already know but don’t really see, like the woods behind your house, or the abandoned building you pass on the way to work, or the neighborhood you drive through every day but never spend any time in.

because there’s real value in seeing the places you know from a new perspective.

your brain will thank you for it since things we actively seek out tend to stay with us longer than the things we find without really looking.

the things we do by accident tend to stick with us longer than the things we wanted to stick with us.

the detours are more memorable than the destinations.

adulthood has this nasty tendency to turn everything into an exercise in value.

calculating how much something is worth and whether we should pursue it based on the return on investment it has in our lives.

it’s how we end up spending our lives doing things that make others rich while doing little to enrich ourselves.

everything we do is calculated, we look at what it gives us and the cost of doing it and decide if it’s worth our time and energy.

and in chasing value, we strip things of meaning, of beauty, of the sheer joy that comes from doing something just because it’s there.

and we forget that life isn’t something we should optimize. it’s something we should experience.

so do things that accomplish nothing. just to have done them.

stare at the stars for no reason. watch the sunset without capturing it. play a musical instrument that serves no practical purpose. read books that don’t teach you anything. visit museums with no interest in the curated collections.

spend some time sitting in beautiful places with no particular goal in mind other than being there

there’s real science behind the benefits of doing these kinds of things, since marveling at the sheer scale of things around us has this interesting side effect of putting our problems in perspective.

it’s all just another way to take something that should enrich your life and turn it into a productivity hack.

don’t optimize the wonder out of your life, you already spend enough time doing things to become more productive as a human.

let some things just make you feel good for no particular reason

last one but to me maybe the most important one.

this is the one i wanted to end with, since it’s probably the rule that actually burrows itself into your bones.

i speak from experience when i say that the cats got my tongue too many times in life.

we put off important conversations in our lives assuming we’ll have another opportunity and another time to say these things

i love you. i’m proud of you. thank you. i’m sorry. you changed my life more than you know.

we treat these conversations as if we can put them off indefinitely, as if whatever thing we want to say will still be there when we finally decide to say it.

but they’re not guaranteed. they might not be there at all, might be locked away forever.

the only thing left is a memory of what was, what could have been if only we’d spoken up in that moment.

and that’s a fate that should befall few things in life. least of all the things that matter most to us, the things we hope will bring us joy or comfort or reassurance in the moment that we need it most.

so don’t make the people you love have to guess at how you feel, just tell them.

say the thing while you still can. because once that moment passes, it’s gone for good.

and no matter how much you might have needed that conversation to happen, it’s too late, it’ll never happen now, because the thing you wanted to say will always be something you never did.

i’m telling you i love you

now go tell it to someone else in your life.