1. Not everything is about having wrists like eggshells that can be cracked easily so the yolk runs out. Often, it’s more useful to balance your wrists on the counter, away from sharp objects like knives, to keep them from falling off and apart.
2. Waves are the ocean’s way of speaking, and with so many people vacationing on beaches all the time, the ocean is always making these beautiful, grandiose speeches to them, but no one is listening. Your internal compass is like this. Maybe it’s time to start paying attention to the direction it points, instead of simply focusing on its spinning motion.
3. Metaphors about the body as a burning building or a shipwreck are shitty, cliché, and overused. The body is more like a phone line that sometimes gets used and other times doesn’t. And sometimes even when it does get used, there’s nothing but silence between the body and the person using it. It’s probably best to stop giving out your body to strangers like a phone number.
4. The blue whale is one of the largest animals on earth. If you were to step inside its skin like an open house tour, its cavernous ribs would meet like tree branches above your head. What a beautiful thing. Instead of texting your crush about going out for coffee, text them this fact about whales next time instead. They will appreciate it so much more, and love you for it.
5. Floods can be devastating but sometimes they bring miracles too, like how their thousands and thousands of tons of water leave behind new plants growing in the soil. With practice, you too can rise from disaster like this.
6. A happy person and a depressed person walk into a bar. What’s the punchline? There isn’t one, because jokes about depressed people aren’t funny. Also, the difference between being happy and being depressed can sometimes be like being drunk: if you’re happy, you’re drunk on life, and if you’re depressed, you’re just drunk on beer because it’s a way of dealing with sadness, and that’s okay!
7. If you swallowed a firecracker, it would bounce around inside your stomach and light up your internal organs like paper lanterns. Of course, if you actually did this, you would probably die as a result, but the metaphor is a good reminder: sometimes, even in the deepest parts of you, there are bright things waiting to be known.
8. Stop withdrawing from the savings account of your self-pity. Don’t feel bad for yourself anymore. Instead, get out and do something about it. Scrub that self-pity out of your mind like a disgusting spaghetti stain on your favorite white blouse.
9. Before standing at the edge of a cliff, always consider all possible options. One option is to consider the fact that the human eye can detect colors or light with wavelengths of up to 700 nm. That’s a whole lot of colors, and if you jumped off the cliff, you wouldn’t be able to see any more of them, ever. Also, another option is to yell as loud as you can into the canyon below and hear it echoing for miles and miles below. The depth of the echoes would be the depth of the grief your family and friends would feel if you jumped.
10. Normally people don’t walk before they crawl, unless they’re some kind of superhuman. So don’t bite off more than you can chew and all that; just take your time and go slowly. No one’s rushing you.