20 Things I Learned Before I Turned 20

Or, a list of 20 cliche quotes and common phrases

1. It’s better to be interested than interesting.
2. When you smile at the world, the world smiles back.
3. The pursuit of love and happiness > the pursuit of success and money.
4. Respect is the world’s ultimate currency.
5. Liquor before beer, you’re in the clear. Beer before liquor, never been sicker.
6. When you do what you love, the universe conspires on your behalf.
7. Technology is amazing, but nothing can replace the feeling of a hug from a friend or the joy of reading a handwritten postcard.
8. “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”
9. It’s better to be overly curious than overly confident.
10. Pluto is the furthest most planet in our solar system (edit circa 2006: Pluto is not a planet).
11. The best thing to do in a conflict is to understand the person you disagree with, not convince them to understand you.
12. Quality is a probabilistic function of quantity. Or, the key to creative success lies in frequent ideation.
13. There is no free luck; only hard work and unrelenting passion for what you do which results in the creation of deserved luck.
14. Life’s too short to pretend to be someone you’re not. Or, as my elementary school classmates put it, “Take off those chains and baggy shorts, white boy!”
15. The invention of the sticky note was an accident.
16. It’s ok to be alone. And it’s ok to be weird.
17. In order to be irreplaceable, one must be different.
18. “Happiness only real when shared.”
19. We are all stardust, a culmination of 14 billion years of change, and a way for the universe to know itself. (see this gif for more)
20. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.

Interested in reading some of the other things I’ve learned? Check out my blog!