9 Uncomfortable Truths You Should Learn Early On

Unpleasant but unfortunately true. What would you prefer: to grope blindly through life knowing that wisdom is passing you by? Or would you rather open your eyes for once and for all, even if it hurts? The reward for your courage would be a gain in knowledge that would give you an enormous head start on the rest of your life. But as I said: The truth costs courage. Closing your eyes to reality can be convenient and useful. The best lessons on the path to realization are the hardest. All the "aha" experiences that demand blood, sweat and tears from us will be burned into our memory forever. Your gain in wisdom and knowledge will strengthen you, better equipping you to move into the future. Granted, some of it may seem like water under the bridge to you, or remind you of the sayings our grandmothers embroidered on decorative pillows. In this article, we present you nine irrefutable truths about life that you can believe without reservation. 

1. The world runs on money.

It does, unfortunately, and there's nothing to shake that point. Without money, we would be homeless and starving sooner or later. The idea of a world full of charity, in which the strong take good care of the weak, exists only in utopian constructs. Even the political ideal that everyone should have the same amount and all would be well has failed miserably. Numerous idealists in the 1970s tried living in communes and even emigrated to uninhabited islands to create egalitarian communities where money didn’t matter. All these experiments have failed. There are always people who put self-interest above the common good and want more than the others. Without money there is simply nothing in life, we have to accept this fact. Even if we went back to the barter economy, which some followers of the neominimalism movement have also tried to do, you simply can't get through life without filthy Mammon, god of riches, no matter how simple and modest you live. And: More money always means more opportunities.

2. There's no such thing as the perfect time.

No matter if you want to launch a new career, finally start a family or emigrate: Don't wait for the perfect time. There is no such time for anything in life. The signs might be more or less favorable, at best. In principle, however, it is a decision of the heart when it is time for you to begin a new chapter in your life. Your intuition will be a good guide. Remember: If the first steps are easy for you and you succeed in everything that paves the way onto the new path, then you are on the right track. If, on the other hand, one obstacle after another gets in your way, it's better to leave it alone. The right time will come, but you'll be waiting a long time for the perfect one.

3. No partnership is better than a bad or mediocre one.

How many people, especially women, linger in unsatisfying, loveless and dormant relationships just to play the "I'm in steady hands" card. Most partnerships at some point are more reminiscent of a social welfare project that somehow benefits both sides. As long as no one is harmed physically or psychologically in the process, there is basically nothing to be said against it. Problematic, however, are relationships where one part prevents the other from developing. Partners who don't want to support our dreams are not on our side.

4. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

You can think what you want about this brutal phrase - it's couldn't hold more truth. The more difficult the challenges, crises and lows in our lives that we have successfully overcome, the more we benefit from them. Strength must grow. Bad experiences are the best breeding ground for it.

5. Everyone makes mistakes.

This truth is also not new. The perfect human being does not exist, because then he would probably be a god.

6. Spending time on social media is wasted time.

It's tempting, provides entertainment and yes, information for each and every one of us. But the Internet and its unimagined possibilities rob us daily of valuable life time that could be spent much more wisely and profitably. Every glance out the window draws more energy for body, mind and soul than staring zombie-like at a smartphone or tablet.

7. Life doesn't always seem fair to us.

Everyone has their own opinion on this subject and, of course, their own experiences. Some have enjoyed fate’s fair graces and are at home on the sunny side of life. Still others are catapulted mercilessly from one crisis to the next, with no prospect of recovery. But we only ever see part of the big picture. The bad and the good are each only snapshots and not the whole movie. Whether we see life as beautiful or painful depends 100 percent on what we pay attention to and which aspects we focus on.

8. Wrongly decided is better than undecided.

This point may come as a surprise, but deciding wrong once or several times is better in the long run than remaining defenseless in an unsatisfactory situation like a trapped animal and playing dead. Lived passivity is equivalent to being buried alive. Actively deciding what you want and what you don't want, on the other hand, is what life is all about - failures included.

9. Long-term relationships are not automatically good.

Just because couples have successfully been together for a few years doesn't automatically indicate a good relationship. Especially in recent years, with women finding it easier to enter the workforce late in life, the divorce rate for marriages that had already passed their 25th wedding anniversary rose dramatically. The duration of a partnership says nothing about its quality.

Today’s Conclusion

Blinded by unrealistic expectations. Our view of life, like so many things, is honed in our childhood. The example set by our parents and our own family plays a major role. Later, we get to know the wonderful world of literature, music and movies, whose only task is to sell a dream. The Internet and all its possibilities of self-expression has brought this trade in great expectations and false ideas about life to a temporary peak. However, even if we compare our lives with those of others directly surrounding us, it still doesn’t give us real facts and will only make us unhappy at the bottom line. On the one hand, we humans always see what we want to see, and on the other hand, we decide every day what we show others about ourselves. As Shakespeare wrote, life is in fact a stage. We humans are the players, the script is written by someone whose intentions we don't know and probably wouldn't understand. The one single truth for life does not exist. It is different for each person. That's it for today.