1.) Love a dog.
Or two dogs. Or three dogs. Four or more dogs if you have the energy and the resources. Do extraordinary things for them, take them to outdoor restaurants, buy them expensive little harnesses and allow them to show you around the neighborhood. Unleash them in a dog park.
Brush their teeth. Knot your old socks and underwear together and let them tug it apart. Talk to them incessantly--they will come to understand your language. Allow them on the furniture. Allow them in your bed. Get used to their warm toast smell. Do whatever you can to convince them they are the most wonderful and special creatures in the universe, for dogs will make you happy.
Cats can too, if they don't make you sneeze. I've heard good things about cows. Horses. Anything with a heartbeat is an appropriate recipient of human affection.
2.) Travel.
Go places. As well as you are able, see the world. Walk with strangers. Understand the diversity and ingenuity of our kind while keeping in mind our fundamental commonality.
Eat unusual things. Drink the locals' bitter coffee. Get away from the luxury hotels and gated compounds. Try to speak the language. Get lost to the point of consternation, to the point where you seek the help of a foreign police officer or subway worker. It's likely you'll be touched by their kindness.
3.) Be a grownup.
Attend to your responsibilities, pay your taxes, renew your car tags. Roll your garbage cans to the curb at the appropriate time; roll them back as soon as is practical. Consider your neighbors. Clean up after yourself and do a little more if you can. Participate in civic life--go to ball games, street fairs, gallery openings and farmers markets.
Don't seize every advantage that presents itself; let even the overly aggressive and stupid drivers merge ahead of you. Pull your weight at work and try not to whine too much about those who won't. Take rules lightly, but keep them in the main.
Dress better than you have to, especially when traveling. Don't ride your bicycle on the sidewalk (you're not 10 years old). Speak up, but don't be loud. Be worthy of self-respect.
4.) Learn how to argue.
It's not done with a meme or by falling back on the remembered (or cut-and-pasted) words of some intellectual mascot whose highest and best use is to provide caulk for advertising. Avoid using all-purpose terms of obliteration like "pretentious." Be respectful and exact. And listen. Entertain the possibility that you might be wrong.
Fair argument is always a useful test, it can lead you to discover things about the world and yourself you may never have otherwise considered.
5.) Don't mistake the Internet for real life.
It's not. Virtual bullies are invariably compensating for actual pain. Everyone constructs an online identity warped by wishfulness and shame; they crop and filter their lives to try to present themselves as they want to be perceived. There is no humility in the cyberworld, only humblebragging.
It can be fun to stroll the midway; it can be useful to rediscover people we used to know and to meet the avatars of strangers. But we should never lose sight of how easy it is to invent an identity or a narrative. We should never mistake the faint and tremulous click-and-tap signals passed through digital media for genuine human connection.
6.) Know your limitations.
You are possessed of finite resources and subject to self-delusion. There are epistemological limits to what you can know, and history would suggest that a great deal of what you believe you know will in the end turn out to be twiddle twaddle.
To this end sports may be useful, for they are very good at demonstrating the existence of those quicker, stronger and undeniably better than oneself. You may have trouble with the curve ball, you might prove too slow or small to compete in a given arena. This is not a comment on your character but a feature of a cosmos unconcerned with the particulars of your situation.
But the knowledge of one's limitations doesn't relieve one from the obligation of finding them, testing them and occasionally exceeding expectations. There is great satisfaction available in overachieving.
7.) Read a book.
Every day.
Retreat from your own mind into another's imagination. But be selective. Don't waste time with the ordinary and the palliative, that which simply reassures and/or flatters you. Challenge yourself regularly and understand that training to (and through) failure is the only way to grow. Read deeply for sense and sensation, for the moments when the tumblers click and your self-awareness awakens.
Do not restrict yourself to practical text, for the reason to make more money is to be able to enjoy the sort of freedom that's available through self-forgetting. Do not cheat yourself of the opportunity to live various and diverse lives by entering the minds of others.
8.) Respect the poetry of the everyday.
Be ever alert to fresh avenues of delight. The universe is forever confounding one's expectations. Wonder. Be curious. Be vulnerable to heartbreak.
9.) Forgive people.
Or at least try to. Remind yourself how hard it is sometimes to remain equanimous in the maelstrom. Be easy with the ireful. Be easy with yourself.
10.) Love someone in particular.
Partner. And do your best at it.
Have one closest friend with which you share secrets and giggle at the madness afoot in the world. Someone with whom you can share a car, a bed, a life.
And a dog or two or three.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
www.blooddirtangels.com
Editorial on 11/13/2016