Corner of Thought: The Human Experience

Everybody’s got the same advice these days. Be healthy. Be happy. Eat clean, sleep eight hours, cut the sugar, cut the salt, cut the whatever this week’s villain is. And look, there’s truth buried in there. I’m not arguing against health. I’m arguing against the certainty.

Because somewhere out there right now, there’s a man in his nineties on his porch with a cigar in one hand and a story in the other, and he’s outlived half the people who told him he was doing it wrong.

There are folks who smoke, folks who drink whiskey neat, folks who haven’t touched a vegetable on purpose since Reagan was in office, and they’re still here, still laughing, still living. Meanwhile some of the most disciplined, clean living people you’ll ever meet get dealt a terrible hand anyway. Life doesn’t run on a formula. It never has.

That’s not permission to be reckless. It’s a reminder that certainty is a luxury none of us actually have. Nobody’s got the master key to a long life. What we do have is choice, and choice is worth something.

I enjoy a good cigar as often as I reasonably can. Mark Twain put it better than I ever could: “I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.” That’s the whole philosophy right there. Not abstinence, not excess. Moderation. Knowing what you love, giving yourself permission to enjoy it, and not letting it run your life or ruin someone else’s.

Here’s the part people don’t want to hear though. Your opinion about how I should live doesn’t carry the weight you think it does. And mine doesn’t carry the weight I might think it does either. That’s the deal. You get full authority over your own life, and I get full authority over mine. The moment you start handing out unsolicited verdicts on how other people should be living inside their own skin, you’ve stepped outside your lane.

So let people live. Let the cigar guy have his cigar. Let the wine drinker have her glass. Let the coffee drinker have five cups if that’s what gets him through the day. Within reason, within respect for the people around them, that’s their business and nobody else’s.

And you, take the same deal for yourself. Find what actually makes you happy, not what makes you look virtuous on someone else’s timeline, and hold onto it. Keep it within reason. Keep it honest. But keep it.
Be happy. Just don’t confuse that with being obedient to somebody else’s checklist. And maybe, keep the opinions about how everyone else should live a little closer to home.