A Rookie Who Warns Other Rookies

Meditation over articulation.

Seek to contemplate and further your own understanding, rather than make your own viewpoint understood. It is my belief that when you truly understand something you will not need to argue your point, rather you will be able to explain it definitively and succinctly with no room to question. Beware the desire to understand in order to sound intelligent or sound like you understand better than others. This defeats the purpose of contemplation and meditation, and will lead you to make distinctions that are untrue and unreal. It's possible that just by saying that I have overstepped the bounds of my own understanding. I've never been very good at following my own advice. One step at a time.

Acceptance over achievement.

While one must certainly work towards whatever goals make them happy, too often they become distressed or overloaded trying to achieve them. Somebody who reaches the goals they have set for themselves is commendable indeed, but the importance of patient acceptance of your situation at all times is paramount. If you do not accept this as truth, your happiness will be fragile at best while trying to reach your goal, and indeed possibly well after the fact. What happens if you reach your finish line and it is not at all what you expected? Will you try to bend it into something you did expect? Enforcing your will on your surroundings will not work and it will merely bring frustration rather than results.

Always be entering, never exiting.

This is kind of silly, but I've always had this rolling around in my head and wanted to get it down. When you go through a door, you are not exiting the room, rather you are entering the hallway, or the bathroom, or your bedroom. When you walk outside your house, you aren't leaving your house but entering the outdoors. Furthermore, when you go from one room to another, you are still in your house. Whether you are in your house or not, you are still on the same ground. So yes, as insipid as it sounds; never leave, always arrive.

Be sure that you keep your humor.

I mean good humor. Contrary to what many comedians (some of them my among my favorites) will tell you, I believe there are things that are not funny. Not to me, not to you, not your friend with slightly bad taste. While many things are a matter of perspective, I believe things cease to be funny when they harm another person. Whether you are laughing at somebody's pain or a joke you told serves to perpetuate a harmful misapprehension or spread unkindness to a person or group of people. Gossip is poison.

However, not to finger-wag the whole point away. I don't mean that a well-timed verbal jab or playfully making fun of something/somebody is always evil. Laughter is part of how to overcome adversity. For example, when I came out, my family was understandably nervous and didn't know how to approach the subject. They attempted to be respectful but the air around the place was usually uncomfortable. Then one day my sister made a joke about it; a small, innocent, queer joke and at that moment the awkwardness was completely shattered. All I wanted from my family was not for them to be completely ok about everything, but ok enough to have a laugh about it. The point is that the intent wasn't malicious, and led to happiness and understanding.

It's possible that I hold humor above all else as the most important aspect of my life.
The fact that I'm so serious about it is funny in itself.