Sunscreen

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future,
sunscreen would be it.

The long-term benefits of sunscreen had been proved by scientists,
whereas the rest of my advise has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now:
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth.
Well, never mind you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they faded.
But trust me:
In twenty years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and will calling away,
you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.
You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future.
Or worry, but know that worrying is a factor, which is trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble-gum.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your mind, the kind that blind-sided you at 4:00 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy.
Sometimes you’re ahead sometimes you’re behind.
The race is long and in the end don’t beat yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults.
If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love-letters throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what to do with your life.
The most interesting people I know, didn’t know at twenty-two what they wanted to do with their lives.
Some of the most interesting forty-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they are gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t.

Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll divorce at forty, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.
Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either. Your choices are your half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body.
Use it everywhere you can.
Don’t be afraid of it or what other people think of it,
it is the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance.

Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents.
You’ll never know when they’ll be gone for good.
Be nice to your siblings, they are your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go with a precious few that should hold on.
Work hard to put in your gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander,
you too will get old.
And when you do, you fantasise when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you.
Maybe you’ll have a trust fund, maybe you´ll have a wealthy spouse,
but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you are forty, it will look eighty-five.

Be careful whose advise you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.
Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off and painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it is worth.

But trust me, I am the sunscreen.

Baz Luhrman