(My 50th Birthday) Best 10 Things I’ve Learned in 50 Years

50 years … exquisitely aged.

Today.

Made it!

In the spirit of my enduring attempt to offer useful insights and hard-earned wisdom, here’s the absolute best 10 things I’ve learned in 50 years of life on Earth that I know with absolute certainty are absolutely true:

1. I can know nothing with absolute certainty.

The entirety of humanity’s existence is contained within a relatively thin slice of liquid membrane that covers a giant marble rock hurtling through empty space at unfathomable speed, coming from God knows where heading to probably even God doesn’t know where. The foundation of Life remains an unsolved mystery if not an unsolvable fever dream. How can anyone know anything with absolute certainty?

2. I can’t be sure of #1.

There might be things we can know with absolute certainty. I just can’t be certain about it.

3. Life is best lived as questions, not answers.

Answers kill possibility, for you can only find them at the end of any journey of discovery. Answers end intimacy – with others, with life, with yourself – for intimacy is by its nature an ongoing moment-by-moment journey of discovery and honest inquiry. Living in questions helps us stay open, receptive, curious, engaged, ever-growing, always evolving, deeply connected to the present moment.

4. Ask better questions.

For so long I lived inside small, stressful questions: “Why do I have to go to school?” … “When will I find love?” … “Why do so many people drive slow in the fast lane?” … “Why in God’s name did we decide strip malls were a good idea?”

Those questions suck because they focus on what I don’t want, don’t have, what upsets me, and offer no helpful direction forward.

I’ve found it far more useful to ask questions like, “What useful lesson is this difficult situation trying to teach me about myself, about life?” … “How can I let this experience make me a better, stronger, more loving person?” … “What would keeping my heart open look like in this situation?” … “What bigger better story can I tell about losing (that money, the relationship, the job, etc.) that would leave me inspired rather than defeated?”

5. Fear has its place, but only Love makes the ride worth it.

Fearing will keep you alive, but its value and utility end at survival. Only loving helps you thrive. For without a commitment to love, you can’t have great relationships, can’t be grateful for what you have, can’t create (or appreciate) beauty, can’t enjoy the little things, and can’t truly bear the painful things with any dignity.

6. Learn to love the countless boring moments that make up a day.

Let’s be honest, much of everyday life is pretty boring.

How many mountain-top moments, massive victories, or grand gestures will you experience in a year? A few, if you’re lucky. How many little boring things happen on a daily basis? Nearly infinite.

It’s just far more sensible to focus on enjoying the countless mundane moments in a day – walking the trash out to the curb in the quiet of the evening, the sound of children playing, the scent of honeysuckle as you walk by some bushes, that first sip of coffee in every morning!

If you can’t find some enjoyment in what’s boring, you won’t enjoy most of your life.

7. There’s so many things trying to take us out on a daily basis; it’s a miracle any of us live as long as we do.

When I hit 40 I didn’t lament. I didn’t feel “old.” I felt wildly accomplished. I’d outsmarted viruses, car accidents, serial killers (possibly), robbers (probably), lumbering city buses (potentially), a skydiving accident, multiple food poisonings, and countless other daily threats to my life. Now I’m 50, still outsmarting all those things, and gunning for 60 (root for me!).

It is so worth celebrating being alive, for one day one of those infinite things trying to take you out is gonna succeed. Today could be the day.

8. Grieving is underrated.

We are wired for attachment in a world where everything is temporary (I heard that said by an insightful woman with cystic fibrosis who’d seen 100+ friends die). Loss, wanted things disappearing from our lives, is inevitable and constant. Birthday parties, friendships, great books, sunsets, rewarding jobs, beloved pets, family members – everything we love we inevitably lose. Yet we’re terrible at grief. We prefer to bury it underground with whatever’s dead.

We have no rituals to process loss. Our funerals suck. We insist the dead wouldn’t want our tears but only for the party to go on – and maybe they would, because the dead sucked at grieving when they were alive, too. We do grief like we do the dentist: numb me, distract me, and get this over with fast!

The ability to properly grieve – as a skill, a practice – is essential for life to flourish. It expands our capacity to feel. You can’t feel true joy if you can’t feel real sadness. Glennon Doyle wrote, “Grief is love’s souvenir. It’s our proof that we once loved.”

Resist grief, and you cut yourself off from love.

Proper grieving also enables us to let go of what doesn’t serve anymore, what doesn’t work, what is dying, or perhaps needs to die, like bad relationships, soul-killing jobs, harmful economic systems, and such.

In learning to grieve well, our tears become the vital rains that nourish the new life wanting to emerge.

9. Productivity is overrated.

That my worth is tied to my productive output is a sickness I inherited from our culture. It’s a lie. Chasing productivity for the sake of worthiness is a fool’s task. I’ll never be productive enough with that mindset. Instead, it’s far more soul-fulfilling (and enjoyable) to express productivity as intentional acts of creation, of deep listening, of being attuned to the needs of the world around me, and then meeting those needs in the unique ways that only I can offer.

Productivity merely for the sake of productivity is deadening, an infinite loop of existential anxiety channeled into a busyness that only yields exhaustion, which soon recycles itself back into anxiety.

Rather, consider approaching productivity as the commitment to consistently contribute something meaningful to the world around you.

Also, don’t underestimate the vital importance of creating beauty for the world around you. There’s no such thing as worthless art, no matter what the bank tells you.

10. Surround yourself with people who help you be your best self, who deeply accept you even as they may challenge you, and around whom you feel deeply good more than you feel bad.

Minimize your exposure to those who don’t help you be your best self (and eliminate it completely where you can).

My best business plan – my best life plan – has always been just keep putting myself in rooms with people who inspire me. Never fails.

11. Peas are the worst food.

12. No matter what the haters say, you can put 13 things on your Top 10 lists if you choose to.

Especially after 50.

In the end, this list is grossly insufficient. I could easily write an entirely different one with different lessons.

But that’s the magic of life: it forever defies neat conclusions (and top 10 .. or 13 .. lists).

Congratulations on making it, Bryan Withrow Reeves, and for living life on your own terms … more or less.

Be proud.

Now, let’s go for 60!

📸 credit: David Tosti