I Asked People “What You’ve Learned So Far In Life”, And Here Are Their Answers

"I think the overall goal for myself at least, and a lot of other people is just to really find happiness. Find that thing that is technically a job, but you don’t see it as a job. It makes you happy, because you’re doing what you love. People tend not to do that because life gets in the way. "

At the end of the day, when you're a hundred years old, you are gonna look back and think “Man, that was a funny time, that was a funny time when she cheated on me, that was a fun time when I got fired, because that opened doors to this and that. So, just enjoy the ride.

"Part of what really drives me is I like to prove people wrong. I’ve had a lot of people in this city over the last 18 years try to tell me that I can’t or that I shouldn’t. I love proving someone wrong, and showing them that yes I can do that, and yes I will, and I will do it better than you ever imagined."

"Communication is something that is really tough right now. I feel like not a lot of people are listening. If you were a superhero what would your power be? I always think about that, and I think it would just be fluent in every language as I would want to be able to communicate with everyone"

There is only one thing that scares me about getting older. It's that I didn’t do all the things on my bucket list. If I can keep getting older, but be who I am, moving and grooving, then I have no fear of aging. I just want to stay youthful as long as I can. My name is Dyan Lopez and I was born on May 12th.

"I want to be a kid forever. When I'm 18, I'm going to be a legal adult, so I'm kind of scared about that. I have friends that are a little bit older, and they're broke. And they tell me how broke they are, and how they are struggling. When they tell me stuff like that, I tell them "There's always downs before there's ups," stuff like that. I would hope that I think that way when I'm in that position, but I don't know. I might just be depressed."

"If you got love man, everything else is freakin' nothing bro. You need to love man. You need to love other people. You need to learn to love yourself, to stay out of trouble, to stay off of drugs, and that love is God man. Only God's love can do that man."

At my core, I’ve always been a very supportive person. I’m always there to help my family, take care of my sister, be friends with people. I think that a lot of my doubts and insecurities have come from not getting that validation from a straight society and household, and having to live with that shame. And not even being able to express it. Because a lot of people can’t relate to you when you are this way.

Luck is being prepared when opportunity presents itself. Growing up in a small town you don't necessarily know what all the options are, and I think that's been the biggest revelation for me. Being an adult and having that wide-eye. I want to tell young people to do dream big. Challenge yourself. Make goals.

One of the things that I think is exciting is that I don't have as much fear as I used to bring with me all the time. Like to do something like this. To talk to you in front of a camera and actually be, I guess "who I really am." That would've been much more of a challenge, and I think over time, over going to school in psychology, over the losses that I've had, the joys that I've had. I've accepted myself more. 

"Depression is often a byproduct of frustration. It's when you really want something to change, and you just don't know how, and that's when we tend to go to the deep end a little bit."

Every time I catch myself complaining, I’m like “You’re fine. You’re OK. You’re living. Just cut it out!” If I catch myself like “oh that sucks!” I just tell myself to cut it out. Because if you have a negative mindset, that is going to be your day. My name is Amanda Sorensen and I was born on May 11th, 1991.

I struggle with "what is the purpose of life." Because it all feels so meaningless, if the world is going to keep turning after you die, and then in a billion years the sun is going to explode. So, what does the hopefully 80 years on this planet matter? If I do this or if I do that. I think thinking that big is also meaningless. I'm trying to think on a smaller scale. Like in my life, I think my purpose is to just try to bring joy to other people. Whether that has a bigger role in the universe, it probably doesn’t. So, maybe I should just stop putting myself on that scale. 

Traveling. It makes you feel small. And I think a lot of people would feel depressed about that concept. Whatever community you’re in, whatever thing you’re doing that is beloved by everybody. It’s really nice to go someplace where no-one has every heard of you, or the thing that you do.

After a decent amount of self-inspection, I think I know the things I could have done better. And one of them is not always looking for the giant star, but focusing on what you have and making it the best.

"Ya, the meaning of life, you’re making it, it’s your choice to make it. You know, people may believe all the things I believe in, that four rainbows and a rhinoceros are here, and in four years they will come and knit me a blanket. Because no one else will do it for you, and you should make it, you should make the meanings."

"You know, you figure it out, and you grow and you learn how to do things that you didn't know how to do before. And you just have to adapt, and I think that's a part of college. It's learning how to live your life and learn how to be an adult"

"What would your art look like if you had no fear?” I think at a certain point, when we start making art or start being creative in any way, we start with this child like sense of “I can do anything. I can make anything, and I don’t care what it looks like. If anyone looks at it, I don’t care what they think about it. And I wish that I could get back to that sense a little bit more. I think the farther you go in a creative pursuit, the older you get, and the more you study it, the harder it becomes to escape the art. In good and bad ways. I wish that I could go back and write without this notion of, it has to be structured this way.

As a millennial I'm no different than my mom or my dad, or someone born a hundred years ago. What's different is the world that I was born into. There's something about this time that makes my generation more anxious than other times.

I had to have friends tell me “You're an amazing person." You need to accept who you are, and once you're happy with who you are, and you accept the things in your life, you will care less. And its so true!