Eric Dover

Today I turned 37. I was once insane, lost, occasionally homeless, angry, the world darkened to a dim and blinking light at the end of a shuttered hallway. But today I am married, have a beautiful daughter, am a published author, run a cheese company, and wake up everyday happy to be alive. Everyday the aperture widens. Everyday more light comes in. Here are 37 things I’ve learned. One for each of 37 years. 1. There is nothing more important than understanding you have the free will to steer your life in the direction that you want. Free will is the most precious thing you possess, and the only thing that cannot be stolen, beaten out of you, borrowed, or destroyed. 2. If you run away from your responsibility, you are not running into freedom. You are only making the decision that you will now be the slave of your hedonistic desires and impulses, instead of their master. 3. The only way to truly lose is to give in to despair. 4. If we’re not doing it all for the children and their future, then what is it all for? 5. A terrifying proposition: Everything you do matters. Nothing is inconsequential. Not a moment. Not a sip. Not a glance. Not a sigh. It is not easy to accept this. Cling to the edge of the abyss with your fingernails if you have to. Crawl across the floor if you have to. But make sure at all times that your intentions and actions are aligned with this understanding. 6. A nice leather jacket really does make everything better. 7. Work and move in silence. Show only the results. You want to be a swan, floating ethereal on the top of water like glass. Frantic, churning, and working hard beneath the surface in the invisible depths. 8. It’s supposed to be fun. Sometimes it’ll be tough. And sometimes it’ll be boring. But if you’re not having fun at least some of the time, you’re doing something wrong. 9. Unfortunately for many of us, God is real and yes he does love you. 10. The demons, spirits, dead Mesopotamian gods, ghosts, and angels are real too. You can ignore most of these, though. Most of their power over you comes down to being loud and obnoxious. 11. Gratitude is the secret to happiness. In fact, it may be the only path to achieving happiness. The Russian novelist Solzhenitsyn learned to find this gratitude while he starved in a Soviet gulag. “Bless you, prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul." 12. Life goes by fast. Do not compromise on what is sacred to you. Not a single time. Not for a single second. That is how your life disappears underneath you, one little insignificant moment at a time, until you look back one day and realize you’ve wasted the entire thing, and you’re on a road you don’t recognize toward a destination you never wanted. 13. The battle of good and evil is fought inside every human heart. But the battle can be won. Remember that. 14. Sometimes sunlight and a walk in nature can do more for your mental health than a hundreds therapy sessions in dark, cramped rooms wearing slumped shoulders on a sinking couch while you stare absentmindedly at a seashell collage on the wall behind your therapist's head. 15. One day you will have to come back home. 16. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" Open yourself up to the possibility that there’s more out there than you’ve allowed yourself to perceive, and you’ll soon discover that what you “know” about the world is like the thin meniscus of pond scum on the edge of dark waters that go on down forever. 17. Find a husband or a wife who will tell you “no” sometimes. We become delusional and ugly tyrants under the conditions of 100% compliance. The word “No” refines you into a better person. 18. You might be surprised how many problems cease to be actual problems when you stop thinking about them and giving them oxygen. 19. The world will treat you better if you open your heart and give the world permission to wound you. 20. Listen to Francis Bacon. “Nature to be commanded, must be obeyed.” 21. If you’re feeling miserable and unloved, the easiest way to make yourself feel better is to destroy your resentment by doing something for someone who has hurt you. 22. If you want to truly love yourself, you have to make yourself into someone worth loving. And you start by deciding that is what you will become. 23. I have beef with Marcus Aurelius, but he was right when he said “At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?’” Get out of bed, human. You’ve got a job to do. 24. Don’t try. The second you “try,” you’ve already lost. You decide to do the thing and you do it. 25. Life really is beautiful. We’re living in a miracle and we’re so used to it many of us don’t see it. We complain about the dirt on the floor, the playdoh smashed into the upholstery, when in truth if we could see the full power of the beauty of the world we inhabit, it would burn our eyes. 26. Remember that you’re a moron. You don’t know a fucking thing. When you accept this, maybe you’ll actually be able to learn something. 27. All states are temporary. The happiness will go away, but so will the sadness. And it will come back, again and again. In eternal recurrence. As Bukowski once wrote, “Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.” 28. Don’t get so distracted by work and what you “have” to do that you forget your health, beauty, recreation, your children, all the things that nourish your spirit and enrich your soul. These things are more important than being able to work for a few more hours. 29. Grace is the one thing that cannot be earned. But it’s not rare. It’s all around you, waiting to be received. Don’t forget it’s there. In Jacob’s dream, the angels descend up and down the ladder, from earth to heaven and back. You don’t have to struggle up the ladder yourself. Grace is the gift that comes to you. 30. If you look in the mirror and you don’t like what you see, then fix that. 31. Sometimes your existential crisis is really just a need for a nap and a bowl of pasta carbonara in disguise. 32. Your art, your work, doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be alive. Don’t stop until you feel the heartbeat. Tha-thump tha-thump tha-thump. Feel it? That’s the pulse that’s going to carry you from the inside of your skin to the end of the earth. 34. Demons don’t know how to take a joke, and their laughter is cruel and pointed at your pain. Humor keeps your spirit uplifted and your pain in its proper hierarchy. 35. It’s okay to get messy. You’re alive, and if you’re not making mistakes, then you aren’t growing and learning. 36. Dreams can become reality. Someone just has to have the courage to bring them into being. To wrestle flight from the birds. To make machines from glass and sand that sing made up languages and connect the entire world. To down the acid and discover the spirals inside all life called DNA. You can be that person, too. 37. God looked upon this world, past and present and future, with everything it contained, all its ugliness and evil, its rape and abortion, its tragedy and nuclear bombs and its cancer, and he still said, “It is good.” Then he entered it. Remember that. Remember when despair wants to take you, that there is something so precious and beautiful and valuable about life that ultimately it is all worth the pain. Even if you can't see it.