101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

by Brianna Wiest

Some love teaches us what it has to teach us in a month. Some a lifetime. Neither is more important than the other.

You don’t “have” to, you “get” to. This is one of the simplest changes in perception, and yet also something truly fulfilled people master: the knowing that everything is an opportunity to experience. You don’t have to go to work; you get to go to work. You don’t have to wake up early; you get to wake up early. When you start considering things not as obligations but as opportunities, you start taking advantage of them rather than trying to avoid them.

The people who have lost love know that right there is the point at which you lose yourself—when you start believing someone else will carry some part of you with them when they walk away. When you start seeking salvation in the very person you have to be saved from, believing that someone else—someone other than yourself—can save you.

They know you never lose love. They know that what you experience, how you grow, what you take and learn and see and do because of it, is the point. Not to have it forever, but to become what it was meant to make you.

There is no such thing as letting go; there’s just accepting what’s already gone.

It wasn’t that we came upon hard times and got through it—we came upon hard times and awakened to something deeper.

You are only as alone as you think you are.

Happy people are not people who “feel good” all the time; they are the people who are able to be guided by their negative emotions rather than paralyzed by them.

Plan your heart-to-hearts. The older you get, the more inconvenient it becomes to talk until 3 a.m. (There’s work to do and groceries to buy and parents to call and you get the picture.) So plan ahead if you must. Decide to have a sleepover and keep the next day open so you can stay up and sleep in and relive your middle school glory days.

Most of our turmoil simply comes from never having been told that love will keep breaking our hearts until they open, and that we will be the ones throwing ourselves in again and again.

You have to realize that often, the struggle is that we leave, even though we love them, and we fight, even though we love them, and we do wrong by them, even though we love them, and it’s not because we don’t love them enough, but that all of these things can coexist within us, and the presence of one love doesn’t make another go away.

Some people love silently. Some love without ever realizing they’re in love—love doesn’t look loving at all. It’s masked by fear, forced into remission, and acted on in bouts of anger and disappointment. Sometimes it’s not being able to look at someone after they’re gone, sometimes it’s not being able to stop, and most times it’s not being able to tell them either way.

The only matter is that we let love do what it’s supposed to: give us more of it, even—and probably especially—when it means we have to take it for ourselves. Sometimes we choose people to show us the hidden parts of ourselves. Sometimes we choose people who we know will hurt us. Sometimes it’s the only way we can be acquainted with our inner beings, and even though we don’t understand it, it’s often the most honest, beautiful way we love ourselves, too.

You have to stop believing that you need other people’s permission to be okay with yourself.

The knowing that nothing is permanent here, especially our physicality. This is a ride. The car needs to work to get you through it. People will judge you as much as they want, but their judgment will be theirs to reconcile, not yours.

That you will never really know what great things lie ahead, and though the unknown may seem scary, that you aren’t supposed to. It’s elusiveness that makes things feel incredible when they arrive.

The knowing that the lack of one sense, one talent, one ability, does not lessen you; it defines you as someone cut out for a challenge above others.

Read. If you don’t read, it’s not because you don’t like reading; it’s because you haven’t picked up anything that interests you. What you read now will affect the person you’re going to be for decades to come. Read articles and essays online about how people cope with their fears—in it you will find camaraderie, how many strangers feel just as you do. Read about things you don’t understand, that scare you and fascinate you. Just read, damnit.

("We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." —Oscar Wilde)

If it’s a relationship that prompted a revolution in your worldview, know that this relationship has likely served its purpose. A lot of people hold on to the catalyst of their personal “awakenings” because they confuse “big love” for being “forever love.” They’re not the same thing.

“Loving yourself” is an action, not a feeling. When we think of romantic love, we think of the flush of hormones that gives us an ooey-gooey emotion. We rarely think of the daily tasks and commitments necessary to make someone else’s well-being as important as our own. The same goes for loving yourself: We think it’s the emotion that comes with holding yourself in high regard, when most of the time it’s more like standing up for yourself, having the courage to keep going, having the courage to quit, finding happiness despite the impermanence and unreliability of things, and so on.

the most difficult moments of your life will be the catalysts of your becoming.

You will be grateful things didn’t turn out the way you wanted. You will be grateful for what you struggle with once you get to the other side.