Twitter asked, “What’s your best advice for young adults?”
My best advice for young adults is to find a way to forgive yourself for your mistakes. This might not seem like a pressing issue when you’re young, but as you grow older and your mistakes accrue, it can become one. The sooner you learn to deal with guilt and regret, the better off you’ll be.
First, remember that everyone makes mistakes. “Life is so easy and all the answers are so obvious!” said no human ever. Forge a path to forgiveness and keep it open. Formalize or ritualize the process, if necessary. Focus on fixing the mistakes that you can, making amends where possible, and taking whatever life lessons you can learn from those mistakes. Then let the mistakes and all of their attendant feelings go–officially and permanently–and never allow anyone to continue to beat you up over them, not even yourself. And last, do the same for other people. Forgive them, and do what you can to help them along their path to redemption. A society that doesn’t foster redemption not only creates unhappy people but also gives its worst offenders no incentive to do better. Life will never be easy, but it can be made to be less difficult if we all work to make it that way.