I turn 16 today. Here are some ideas (and questions) on my mind:
1. Are you going to wait for death to enjoy life too?
2. Tomorrow is simply a bonus.
3. Why do we choose to stay in a bad place when reason can easily get us out of it?
4. Some die at 25 yet aren’t buried until they’re 75.
5. Human feeling is beautiful when you understand it.
6. Question authority.
7. School is messed up. We’re going to change that for people to create a better world, who’s with me?
8. We’re going to Mars sooner than later.
9. The greatest of joys for me comes with understanding.
10. Opinions are like clouds in the sky. It’s hard to observe with opinions since they hide what’s beyond them.
11. Curiosity takes you places structure cannot.
12. Adults are fools. Children are wise. For children, everything is new. The adult hasn’t seen a new thing in years.
13. Life is simple. We make it complicated.
14. One of the most important questions you might ever ask yourself: “Are you letting yourself be guided by fear or by love?”
15. Don’t let the ego speak louder than your (desired) principles.
16. Dogma exists in many forms today. It is like poison to society but no one seduced by it knows their helpless condition.
17. Creating knowledge is how we understand the world.
18. The Universe does not speak our language. We go forth explaining it. Thereby creating explanatory knowledge. That’s how we understand it.
19. Our place in the Universe today may seem insignificant but people’s choices really do have the ability to transform the world.
20. Reason is fun.
21. Reading books probably had the greatest impact on my life and it continues to do so still.
22. Not anyone should be worthy of being called “a friend”. Have a strong definition of that supreme word.
23. If they really love you, they’d care about your desires rather than their expectations.
24. Make sure you’re having fun. Otherwise you might as well have been an investment banker.
25. Criticism is good. We tend to shun away from it. That inhibits growth.
26. You tend to dislike ideas by people your emotional human self hates. Separate ideas from people to have greater judgment.
27. People aren’t inherently bad. There can be good intentions behind evil actions. The bad ideas that a person holds in their mind are the cause to why you think a person is bad. Separate ideas from people.
28. Allow for neuroplasticity of your mind. Hear out ideas, listen to songs and study people you’d naturally disagree with.
29. More history, less forecasts.
30. Cold DM/email people more often. Remember though: people care utmost about their self-interests. Find the area where you mutually gain.
31. “Experienced” people that tell you the world or the Internet is a dark place, a dangerous one either haven’t seen as much as the world as they claim to or they have (unbeknownst to them) fallen into a dark human tendency to remember bad events more vividly than the good ones.
32. Reasons to hate are seemingly stronger than reasons to love.
33. Things that are underrated: thinking, waiting and learning (not the school way of course; learning the real way).
34. Take nobody’s word for it. Not even yours.
35. Actions speak louder than words.
36. The future lies in people’s choices. There’s an infinite number of possibilities that future can carve into, so being pessimistic is simply being ignorant of our potential.
37. Writing to the mind can be like what massage is to the stiff muscles of the body.
38. Don’t be guided by your mechanical way of reasoning while making important decisions.
39. Perspective is everything.
40. Isn’t life so beautiful?
If you had a fraction of the fun reading this as much as I had writing it, I think we both win.
Hat tips (a few ideas in this post are direct or almost direct quotations by other people. They deserve to be identified with their quotations. Here they are):
14. Movie – tick, tick… BOOM!
Arjun Khemani 
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