In the introduction to her book, The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin shared a list of personal reminders and observations. She called them “secrets of adulthood”.
“Bring a sweater. What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while. People don’t notice your mistakes as much as you think.”
What struck me about this list is the simplicity. The plainness to the point of banality. I sat there looking at the bulleted items thinking, “This is what she calls secrets?!”
I don’t know about you, but I spent my 20s and 30s exploring and collecting. I tried on different identities — different hats — to see what fit. I collected ideas and all sorts of frameworks for living, and experimented with other people’s blueprints for success.
Complexity felt like growth. I even had complicated relationships. The more nuanced my thinking was, the more serious it felt. It had gravitas, and I therefore did too.
I think my favorite sentence was, “It depends.” And I’d launch into fifty shades of grayness that proved (in my brain) how complex — and therefore good! — my thinking was.
I remember seeing Charles Darwin’s early notebooks — filled with observations, questions, half-formed theories from his voyage on the Beagle. Everything was potential. Everything was data. How wonderful was that!
The more, the better.
Isn’t it?
• • •
Somewhere in my 40s though, something shifted. Or something must have. I can only see it in hindsight.
I still kept on exploring, but the center of gravity was changing. It wasn’t simply “What else can I try?” anymore, but more like “Of all these different things and ideas I’m trying out, what’s actually holding water for me?”
As I look back, I recognize a paring down. There were lessons I had to learn over and over before they finally stuck. Ideas and beliefs that had to be battle-tested — by me, not by anyone else.
And what’s left on my list is surprisingly simple and practical too.
Don’t worry; be happy. Keep a Chapstick in all your purses. Say “I love you” more.
Nothing remarkable. No grand pronouncements or universally applicable principles for living. Just things I know to be true for me because I’ve tested them, often repeatedly and against my better judgment.
Which is making me look at Rubin’s list differently now. Her “Bring a sweater” is plain. But I think what’s interesting about it is everything that had to happen before something that simple ended up on her list.
• • •
I thought again about Darwin’s notebooks.
Those pages may have been crowded, but On the Origin of Species is a distilled argument. He had to go through all that exploring and collecting to get to his magnum opus.
My own years of collecting (sometimes random and chaotic, true) maybe weren’t something I just needed to outgrow.
Maybe we need some of that complexity. We need to explore, accumulate, try things on, change our minds, say “It depends” a few hundred times. How else would we discover what holds up for us?
Rubin’s “secrets” are the farthest thing from dazzling, let alone life-changing. They actually read more like the kind of things you’d tape to the inside of a cabinet door.
“Don’t overthink it. Ask for help. Do good, feel good.”
But I’m thinking they’ve earned their place. The simplicity is what we see. We don’t see all the complexity that came before it.
You know, I’ve come to believe the most interesting thing about getting older isn’t how much we’ve accumulated but what actually remains.
After all this exploring, what do I stand behind? What do I keep?
✴️ I’d love to hear from you:
What’s something simple that you know now that took you a long time to learn?
Talk soon,
Lou
Lou Blaser exchanged PowerPoint decks for essays and has yet to regret the trade. She writes Shaping Life, where she follows her curiosity through books, conversations, films, and whatever else refuses to leave her alone.
I think you need to experience what you don't want. Otherwise, how do you know? That is my experience. Less is more. I was in my late 50s and I decided, I don't want stuff, I want to do stuff.
"Don't worry what other people think about you, because they rarely do." Which lives alongside "be yourself, everyone else is already taken" and "if it costs you your peace, it's too expensive" (not as in keeping peace, but inner soul peace).