Advice for a daughter (part II)

1. You must be able to lower your life but never lower yourself.
2. In this life you either fight to be right or fight to be wealthy. There is no other thing but those. Choose wisely.
3. Your life is in making decisions. The more talented, experienced and inteligent you get and the more efforts you make, the lower the probability of making wrong decissions.
4. The mean justifies the end. A win without honour is much worse than losing.
5. There are two kind of men: those who would betray their wife and those who would not.
6. There are two kind of women: those who would never be with a traitor and those who would.
7. Your word is sacred. Credibility is like virginity: you can only lose it once. Not being true to your word is always intolerable.
8. Grudges can’t be held forever. There comes a moment for forgiveness, because your happiness is more important than your pride.
9. If your forgive, forget too. If you don’t forget you haven’t really forgiven.
10. Don’t be afraid because your life will end. Rather fear the day you feel you hadn’t begin to live.
11. Don’t you ever humiliate anybody. Always seek an honorable end for your foe.
12. Don’t waste time thinking of how a good person is and just be a good person. Your instinct will tell you how.
13. Out of all of the stupid things I’ve done in my life the stupidest by far was becoming a smoking addict. It’s killing yourself in exchange for nothing. Don’t do it.
14. Independently of the man you choose, it’ll be a bad choice. But trust me on this one: don’t let your choice be based on common interest and hobbies but on a common life project and a very similar way of understanding life and the future. And even if you do that you’ll be wrong. I’m really sorry, sweetie.
15. Working is a necessary evil. Some will say you need to enjoy it but in my opinion the foundation of your education is to prepare you to exert yourself even when you don’t. Well prepared people do not need to be motivated in order to fulfill their duty.
16. We haven’t conned you. I’d ask you not to con your kids and to prepare them for the world they’re going to live in and not for an imaginary one.
17. Nobody owes you a thing. The world doesn’t revolve around you.
18. Your dignity is above everything, even above your own well being.
19. Only what God thinks about you really matters.
20. The world is not a terrible place filled with dangers but a great place filled with new experiences and fantastic people. Just be cautious. It’s as simple as that.
21. You’re on a path. When you lose track of that path just wait and it will be revealed to you again if you just stop and listen. You’re not alone. And you’ve never been.
22. People who don’t understand the world are terrified. Everything is a matter of cause and effect. Analyze it and you’ll understand everything. You can’t play if you don’t know what the rules are.
23. There is no other motherland than your own destiny. Don’t let them fool you nor use you.
24. Send my way every man that says you shouldn’t do certain things just because you are a woman or because they are ‘men things’. Run away from chauvinists.
25. Strike any woman that says you shouldn’t do certain things because they are ‘women things’ with a deadly lightning bolt. Run away faster from feminists.
26. Don’t believe that “Nowhere better than in Spain” slogan. It’s a complete lie.
27. If you leave to ease your anxiety you should know it doesn’t work: anxiety follows you everywhere. It is an unconditional travel partner.
28. You know I’m a believer, but don’t let them fool you: spirituality and relating to transcendence it’s no religion’s property and you shouldn’t experience them through any leader although all of them usually wave interesting arguments. Shepherds need sheep. This is between you and God. Between you and the logos.
29. You won’t like those who are advisable for you. Those ones you’ll like won’t be advisable. And it’s going to be like that for all eternity even though you think it’s not your case. Time will tell.
30. You have to read a lot to avoid being stupid. Philosophy, essays, art, history, politics. It’s essential.
31. Better to be missed than to be dismissed
32. I’m going to get the same tattoos you get. So please think carefully whether you want your father to look ridiculous or not. Up to you.
33. Sex sucks when you are not loved.
34. You shouldn’t get used to failing or living in failure. You need to take yourself seriously if you want to respect yourself.
35. Sometimes you can’t get it even if you try, but the day you quit and stop trying, you’ll have to add vital failure to just failure. You can come back from defeat, but you can’t come back from a failure by cowardice.
36. Some chances never come back.
37. Your morals are non negotiable. If they become negotiable you lost control over your life.
38. You need to get use to not having money in order to not look ridiculous when you go through a rough patch. You need to get use to having money in order to not look ridiculous with the wind under your sail.
39. Get use to sharing. Anything you get is only useful if you can share it with somebody.
40. The path to art and to excess is the same one. You are not going to be able to avoid it for long. We better give you the family’s map to it.
41. There’s nothing more humiliating than a person with no art within trying to be artsy. Watch out for that.
42. Living is choosing and struggle to make it. We’re vulgar without our dreams. And vulgarity seeks vulgarity.
43. You are going to live days and nights made for eternity. Never forget them because they are the base on which existence rests.
44. Faith gives you strength. Strength gives you hope. Hope gives you grandeur. Grandeur seeks grandeur.
45. Rendition takes to despair. Despair takes to loss of hope. Loss of hope drives beauty and dreams away. Without dreams you will be miserable.
46. There’s a price to being alive. You bear the huge responsability of carrying the gifts you’ve received.
47. You are invincible when you don’t fear your talent is going to run out. But you are still going to need to read and listen to people more interesting than you. The key to creativity resides in the art of hiding the sources you plagiarize from.
48. Do not skimp yourself, don’t use the brakes on your potential, don’t regulate yourself. Give yourself whole. Don’t behave as any mediocre Jane.
49. Mistrust the inmaculate, the cynic, the pure, the perfect. They either lie or haven’t lived enough to get mud stains.
50. Your father has got fears, love, misery, mistakes, phobias, philias, secrets, a lot of doubts and very few certainties. However his arms will always be open for you. I’m your first and last resort. Don’t you ever forget that.

(to be continued…)