Sahil Bloom on Twitter listed 11 harsh truths – not necessarily pleasant, but true. The first sentence in each truth is hers and the following sentences are my thoughts.

 

1. You will only see your loved ones a few more times. This is about those who live some distance from you, like my parents and grandparents did.

2. Most of your friends aren’t really your friends. They’re just along for the ride when it’s fun, convenient or valuable. Your real friends are the ones who are there when you have nothing to offer in return.

3. Money is a terrible barometer of happiness. However, you do need a minimum amount.

4. Failure does not always lead to growth. That what doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger. It just hurts. (I seem to be quoting Beth a lot these days – as her hairdresser, Marty, says, “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you bitter.”)

5. You’ll literally never know what you want to be when you grow up. I’m in my 70s and have not yet figured it out. Life’s what happens when you are making other plans.

6. Most people don’t really care about you. Or think about you much at all.

7. You probably won’t be remembered or have a legacy. Life’s a bitch and then you die. My test case for this truth is to find any random road or bridge that is named for somebody and tell me who that was. And they were a little famous. Or just think about your great grandparents.

8. The timelines we create for ourselves are mostly just arbitrary nonsense.

9. There is no such thing as a hack. You gotta do the hard work.

10. Hard work and consistency aren’t always enough. Sometimes you need talent, sometimes you need money, sometimes it’s who you know. Good luck is by far the best.

11. The world definitely isn’t fair. This is the biggie. This is the thing that really, really irritates us, particularly the young. For some reason, we demand a fair world and the one we have does not come in that flavor. Nature only “cares” about procreation, and the only law is the law of the jungle. We are making everything else up as we go along and nature doesn’t care. But it makes for incredibly fantastic soap opera.

 

However, let’s all move on, because we carry devastating weapons against harsh truths, primarily denial, but also money. We get to shut reality out until the Fourth Turning or a pandemic or Russia invades Ukraine. Then it cannot be denied – for a while.

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