JUN. 20, 2013
By CHARLOTTE GREEN
1. Go to a country whose language you do not speak, and where English is rarely spoken. Learn what it means to have to find out everything by yourself, and to live glued to your translating dictionary.
2. Sleep with your whole body stretched across the bed in your very own apartment, where no one can tell you what to do or make you be quiet so that they can sleep.
3. Take a road trip simply for the joy of being on the road and not having anywhere in particular to end up. Stop in restaurants and shops along the way that look like they belong in a Norman Rockwell painting, and eat candy that your grandparents used to love.
4. Dance with a stranger in the bar for three whole songs and then go home by yourself, without feeling like you owed them anything.
5. Read a religious text that you’ve never opened before, cover to cover. Don’t worry about converting, just worry about learning something about yourself that you didn’t know before.
6. Organize a big party with all of the people who are living in your town that you somehow don’t often see, despite their proximity. Take advantage of the fact that you’re all still in the same place for the time being.
7. Kiss a friend on the lips when the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.
8. Enjoy long Sunday mornings without children jumping on your bed to wake you up at the crack of dawn to make them breakfast.
9. Call up an old friend you haven’t seen a really long time and make plans to go see them this summer. Follow through with it, even if it means sleeping on their floor in a sleeping bag like you’re 10 years old again. (In fact, especially if it means sleeping on the floor.)
10. Go camping with a few friends, a cooler full of beer, and more burgers than could ever fit on the grill.
11. Save up enough money to get you through a month or so of no income, and quit your dead-end job to
travel around for a little bit. You know that, even if you don’t find something better, you will always be able to replace a job like that one on short notice.
12. Relish in the immense pleasure of quitting a shitty job with a shitty boss that you absolutely loathe going to every day.
13. Spend an entire weekend alone, walking around, eating in restaurants by yourself, and not even distracting yourself with music. Listen to things like you never allow yourself to — the children playing, the breeze blowing, the mellow chatter of diners dining.
14. Throw a theme party where everyone has to come in basically no clothing.
15. Set up two of your friends who you know are completely in love with one another but refuse to actually make the first move on their own.
16. Go on dates with people you meet on the internet, and don’t feel weird or lame about it. Remember that you can find love absolutely anywhere, and there is no reason to limit yourself to the people who happen to be around you in your day-to-day life.
17. Follow one of those online classes offered for free by the best universities in the world. Learn something just for the sake of learning it, and don’t let yourself get caught up in the feeling of being “done” with education in any way.
18. Throw a movie-watching party with all of your friends who have completely differing tastes in movies. Make them fall in love with something that everyone can agree on, such as The Room.
19. Go to an all-night concert that puts you out onto the street when it’s sunny and people are going to work and everyone is serving breakfast.
20. Allow yourself to be taken out on the kind of night with your friends that you would normally bail out on, and see if you don’t have just a little bit of fun while, say, bar-hopping in a city you normally never visit.
21. Go to a strip club and leave all of your inhibitions at the door. (And bring a nice stack of cash, because you should never not properly tip your girls.)
22. Start a new project simply to test your abilities and see what you might not have yet learned about yourself. Work seriously on paintings, submit articles, take up an instrument, join a dance class. Be a better version of yourself. Regardless of the kind of success you might see, you will at least have become the kind of person who isn't afraid to try things.
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