What have been your best realisations about life in general?

I notice how quickly the weekends come around. Is that because I usuaully take a nap each day and am comatose for an hour?.
Thats almost 6 days a year that I miss doing something.

I have said this before, but IMO it bears repeating.

There are three truths in life that I had to learn before I became a grownup.

Mother Nature is capricious- Get over the whiny "why me" attitude. Why not you?

There is no justice in this world- Often the biggest dogs are rewarded with the juciest bones. Get over that, too.

There is a third truth, which, at this moment, eludes me. So I have a fourth. As you get older, your mind and body is not going to work as well as it did when you were a teenager. Be grateful for what you have, work to maximize, and stop bellyaching!

Remembered the third one:

Life is NOT fair. Sometime the good guys get the raw deal, and the bad guys literally get away with murder. No point in obsessing about it. We need to take what we have, and make the best of it.

I know it seems flippant...but there's something to be said for this in all seriousness, irony and all:

Deb-No, I don't think that it is flippant at all. It evokes a powerful message.

Yep...there's nothing 'like life's a piece of **** when you look at it.'

Few people, I believe, are really grateful for what they DO have, and therefore much happiness eludes the masses. I think this may be due to a false pride that many have internalized from early socialization. Many, not wanting to "lose face" will not admit that another group of people actually deserves their gratitude. Also, on a personal level some may oftentimes not show gratitude to specific people that deserve gratitude - family, friends, acquaintances, teachers, neighbors, etc. Most gratitude, I believe, is the perfunctory, "Thanks."

Too many people wanna GIVE advice and not HEAR it. I hope nobody listens to me cause I have no idea what Im talking about.

That this whole thing called living is really not as complicated as many people make it out to be. None of it is really that hard. I wasted a lot of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never has. Fortunately, I got over that quite a while ago.

and youve learned to walk around with one shoe missing?

I was always somewhat of a "perfectionist". But I understand that it is simply not human to be perfect.

In a movie I heard someone say, "My father told me that I would know that I was a man when I realize that in some situations there is nothing you can do but cry."

I agree with all the points made so far. For me personally: paying attention
to the little things in life add up to a state of contentment. In the pursuit of
happiness, many people neglect to see what's truly satisfying in life - being
content. Happiness is a moment, contentment is a state of mind.

Absolutely. (Still working on it.)

Our moments of weakness are not necessarily indications of the kind of people we are.

Life isn't simple. Beware grand unifying theories, especially those concerning human behavior.

Strange; I thought contentment is a moment and happiness is a state of mind. Also, you should have had a semi-colon between the two independent clauses or an "and."

Well, you thought wrong, Foofie: contentment is a state of mind; happiness
is not, as you cannot achieve happiness over a prolonged period of time
whereas contentment is.

Thank you for the grammatical lesson - English not being my first language,
I will have an occasional error in grammar and/or punctuation.

Cannot one always be content and therefore the momentary achievement of happiness is transparent to the continual state of contentment? Sort of like the Venn diagrams in algebra. Also, I believe each person has a "threshold" of happiness or contentment. Lower one's expectations and one achieves happiness/contentment more often, I believe. I do not believe western society is oriented towards contentment, nor happiness; otherwise we would not have all the consumer goods to choose from when shopping.

We may not know our purpose for living here on Earth,
but we each have one.

We can do something in an instant that will give us heartache for life
or, without even knowing, we can influence somebody's life for the better.

Always leave loved ones with loving words.
It may be the last time you see them.

We are responsible for what we do.

No matter how we feel and we either control
our attitude or it controls us.

Heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences.

Money is a lousy way of keeping score.

I have the right to be angry, but it does not give me the right to be cruel.

Maturity has more to do with correctly understanding lessons learned from experience rather than with how many birthdays are celebrated.

No matter how badly your heart is broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.

Our background and circumstances influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.

The happiest people in the world aren't those who have the
most, but they have learned to make the most of what they have.

Yes, there might be some truth to it that the higher the expectations, the
lower the feeling of happiness. However, having a feeling of contentment
not necessarily translates to lower standards, it is the acceptance of your own
life and its circumstances.

What you personally feel is your choice, but please do not speak for the
"western society" in general, as you as non traveled New Yorker have no idea
what's outside your peripheral vision.