Maya Kachroo-Levine

Sweatpants serving as acceptable attire for any occasion. As opposed to after college, when donning sweatpants for seven days straight is about as far from acceptable as you can get. Passing stretchy jeans off at work might be the closest you can get to those glory days, but it does make you appreciate weekends that much more.

Gummy Bears: You’re ridiculously fun, and people just love to have you around. You’re positive, bright, and optimistic. You’re attracted to other people with the same enthusiasm, but also spread yours, and love to share your good energy with everyone else.

“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”

And you can’t feel selfish putting your own happiness first. Especially when there are various factors moving all around you that you can’t control, you need to remember that you can be in control of your own life, and that means putting your well-being first.

How to leave. Unless you stay with your first love – which you absolutely might – you ultimately have to learn to leave. Which means you also have to learn to accept when things aren’t working.

Make Face Time dates! You have the technology to see each other’s faces in the literal palm of your hand. Use it.

“When my granddaughter looks into my eyes, and asks me a question. There’s no feeling like it. She feels like I am this endless source of wisdom, which is both flattering and untrue. That is what love is for me.”

“Sunshine at the beach.”

Bringing flowers. Again, it doesn’t matter who is bringing the flowers to whom, it’s the more the fact that it just isn’t a romantic gesture that happens much anymore. On Valentine’s Day? Yes. Anniversary? Maybe. But on a regular date? Not anymore.

Remember that you’ve already learned one very valuable truth: heartbreak isn’t forever and you have the power to grow and get over it.

Though this list probably won’t make you bilingual and you won’t walk away from it with enough linguistic knowledge to carry on a conversation in a non-English speaking country, it will satisfy you with interesting and potentially useless information.

Going to an event, a museum, a bar, or a movie by yourself, like a boss. Going places alone and not being worried about it is one of the most liberating social moves anyone can make.

Your first weekend away together. Your first road trip, and the memories of long talks in the car and playlists that stick in your head.

You really don’t want to meet anyone on an app. And it’s not that you don’t realize that it’s honestly similar to meeting someone randomly at a bar, you’re just sick of the endless swiping.

The friends who are always there for you. Devote your time to them, instead of aimlessly trying to spend time with people who make you worry that they won’t return your texts, or reciprocate your affection.

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

You can choose to feel let down by people, or you can choose to grow from each personal experience, even the ones that honestly blow.

Lazy Sundays… aren’t really a thing for them. I mean, they might like to sleep in, but they probably won’t just stay in all day. They’ll plan something for you guys to do together.