It Takes a Village
JP offered some excellent advice on my last post, advice so excellent that it absolutely must be included in the Box O' Wisdom. Then I started thinking, "Hey, I have many brilliant bloggie buds..."
So if you have some words of wisdom appropriate for a 13 year old, something that has helped you along the way, why don't you pass it on? Leave a comment or email me. Contributions accepted until around, oh, 2ish PST.
Uncle JP, you so rock.
So if you have some words of wisdom appropriate for a 13 year old, something that has helped you along the way, why don't you pass it on? Leave a comment or email me. Contributions accepted until around, oh, 2ish PST.
Uncle JP, you so rock.
cobbled together by Moi at 4:23 PM
8 Comments:
Here's my contribution:
Surround yourself with people who 'get' you. No one worth knowing ever counts their supreme popularity in high school as a major accomplishment, but everyone worth knowing would, if asked, make special note of their cherished friends. If, for you, those people are band geeks or cheerleaders or science club nerds or goth kids with jet black hair -- it's all good. Just so long as they 'get' you.
That is all.
this is stolen from Brian Andreas, "Storypeople"...
"I used to wait for a sign, she said, before I did anything. Then one night I had a dream & an angel in black tights came to me & said, you can start any time now, & then I asked is this a sign? & the angel started laughing & I woke up. Now, I think the whole world is filled with signs, but if there's no laughter, I know they're not for me."
Blessings. E
Here is my advice;
Take what people tell you,and divide it by the character of that person.If the result is less than 0,..ignore it.
How about this:
A good hair day trumps any kind of bad day.
Likewise, there's nothing a new pair of shoes can't fix.
Oh no! I'm too late! And to think my lateness was caused by a patronising, pointless, 'worse-than-an-utter-waste-of-time' all day training course. ARRGGH!
Had I been on time, this is what I would've written:
"To thine own self be true."
[Actually, pretty much the whole of Polonius' farewell speech to Laertes contains good advice, but when you read the whole of it, you can't quite forget that it's coming out of Polonius' mouth, and he wasn't the nicest of guys.]
Oh, here's another one, from a good friend of mine:
"You can never have enough cheese."
Hope the birthday went well.
These are all brilliant. She's such a lucky kid. And D, you weren't too late...thanks for playing.
Here's what I would have told my 13 year-old-self:
It's ok to refine, change, or drop expectations of yourself...especially if they were never truly yours anyway.
Also, study abroad. (I see she's going to France next summer so I'm sure she'll get the bug.)
Hey roomie! Having lived through 3 teens, the book that gave the most encouragement was "Like Dew Your Youth" by Oscar Peterson. From Psalms, like the morning dew, ingore it and it will evaporate, dissapate and never be again. If you wait long enough, adolescence will go away but in the interim, embrace it, welcome it w/ all the warts and bumps for you will never feel this alive again!! (Until you look into the face of her child...) I watched "All the Pres. Men" and thought of you! :~)
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