Maya Kachroo-Levine

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw.

Making a pact with a friend to try one entirely new thing every week, and then making a list of those things and a schedule. And then following through.

Sweatpants serving as acceptable attire for any occasion. As opposed to after college, when donning sweatpants for seven days straight is about as far from acceptable as you can get. Passing stretchy jeans off at work might be the closest you can get to those glory days, but it does make you appreciate weekends that much more.

“Our motto is, when they go low, we go high.”

Gummy Bears: You’re ridiculously fun, and people just love to have you around. You’re positive, bright, and optimistic. You’re attracted to other people with the same enthusiasm, but also spread yours, and love to share your good energy with everyone else.

“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”

And you can’t feel selfish putting your own happiness first. Especially when there are various factors moving all around you that you can’t control, you need to remember that you can be in control of your own life, and that means putting your well-being first.

How to leave. Unless you stay with your first love – which you absolutely might – you ultimately have to learn to leave. Which means you also have to learn to accept when things aren’t working.

Make Face Time dates! You have the technology to see each other’s faces in the literal palm of your hand. Use it.

“When my granddaughter looks into my eyes, and asks me a question. There’s no feeling like it. She feels like I am this endless source of wisdom, which is both flattering and untrue. That is what love is for me.”

The best way to feel like you “won” isn’t trying to top someone else. It’s not caring what they’re up to because you’re so damn busy killing it.

“Sunshine at the beach.”

Comparing yourself to people you think are doing life better than you are. People are not doing life “better” than you. People are moving at different paces all around you, and that is okay.

When you are on a team with a single parent, you are each other’s first line of defense. You are each other’s be all and end all. And you learn that no matter what happens, and no matter who else comes into their life, that you are always their number one.

Positivity. The great thing about the sun being out more often than not is that it really does boost your mood. Allow that positivity to run through you and influence your day in a good way as often as possible.

Bringing flowers. Again, it doesn’t matter who is bringing the flowers to whom, it’s the more the fact that it just isn’t a romantic gesture that happens much anymore. On Valentine’s Day? Yes. Anniversary? Maybe. But on a regular date? Not anymore.

Remember that you’ve already learned one very valuable truth: heartbreak isn’t forever and you have the power to grow and get over it.

Though this list probably won’t make you bilingual and you won’t walk away from it with enough linguistic knowledge to carry on a conversation in a non-English speaking country, it will satisfy you with interesting and potentially useless information.