Ari woke up. A piece of straw was poking him in his ear. Ari hated straw. Straw usually meant stables, and stables… Oh no! For as much as he abhorred it, only spiky dried wheat could get Ari up to speed this quickly. Having barely opened his eyes, he already had a hunch of where he was. Or, rather, when he was.
It was a good thing, too. His current surroundings wouldn’t give him his usual seven minutes of adjustment time. Right now, he had less than three.
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A few days ago, I turned 35. When I was 28, that number felt inconceivably far away. Now, those seven years seem like the blink of an eye.
On my birthday back then, I noticed the trend of racking up ever more life lessons as we get older — a trend I wished to break. Instead of the expected 28, I wrote down 14 lessons for myself, wondering if even those were too many. “Less is room for more of what’s not there yet” was one of them.
Here’s another lesson I learned around that time: Aging won’t magically free you from stupidity. Only learning will. Wisdom is not guaranteed.
Unless we reflect deeply and continue to improve our habits, we’ll keep making the same mistakes. And while it looks smart if you share more and more life lessons on paper each year, you could argue what’s happening is actually the opposite of learning. If you truly got wiser, surely you wouldn’t need ever more reminders!
Even if we try our best, we’ll have to learn many lessons twice. What better way to create more space in our minds than to distill our knowledge as time goes on? The longer I live, the more I want to condense the sum total of my experiences into a few principles I can easily remember and live by.
So, rather than list 165 individual insights, here are five big-picture lessons from making it halfway through my 30s.
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Every minute spent reading is a minute of culture defended. That’s what I believe.
Therefore, I was both shocked and delighted when Goodreads told me I had managed to read 19 books in 2025. It was my first year of working a full-time job while still writing on the side, and I didn’t feel I read all that much.
Some of those books were short. Others were long. Six of them were part of a journey to read the classics that I began in 2024. The rest were a mixed bag of books written by friends, targeted research, and some bestsellers I picked up along the way.
Books are my all-time favorite gifts to both give and receive. Thoughtful book recommendations are almost as good. Maybe some of my 10 favorites from the year will make for beautiful presents for you as well. You can give them to yourself or whoever they make you think of — because the only surprise better than getting a book is getting a book on a random Tuesday when you didn’t expect anything, let alone the wisdom of a lifetime condensed into a few hundred pages.
You never know where your next great read might come from. Maybe you’ll find yours below. In no particular order, here are my 10 favorite books that I read in 2025, along with the ideas they inspired in my own writing.
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In the How I Met Your Mother episode “The Exploding Meatball Sub,” Barney’s crazy sandwich concoction is far from the only thing to go up in flames.
Ted’s new girlfriend Zoey is both intelligent and pretty. Unfortunately, she’s also the head of the campaign trying to keep Ted’s skyscraper from being built in order to preserve an old building.
“Isn’t it hard for you guys to be on opposite sides of something like this?” his friend Lily, who sees eye to eye on almost everything with her husband and college sweetheart Marshall, asks. “Some of us want a partner who challenges us to grow and evolve,” Ted replies. As it will turn out, that’s baloney.
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The Drink of Despair is an ingenuity of evil. Parching whoever drinks it until they’re desperate for water, this nasty potion will nearly kill its consumer. Naturally, it must be drunk to be overcome — and dark wizards use it to protect their important belongings.
When it comes to dark wizards, Lord Voldemort is the poster child rather than the exception, and so, in one of the series most tragic moments, Harry Potter must feed his headmaster and mentor, Albus Dumbledore, the nefarious concoction. The pair succeeds in sipping the cup, but their victory is short-lived: What they hoped to acquire is no longer there, and they now find themselves weak and defenseless — surrounded by, of all things, water.
It’s a trap, of course. An army of Inferi — spellbound corpses — is hiding beneath the surface. Inside the dark lake of what on any other day would be a welcome source of refreshment, they’ve been waiting to “welcome” the two intruders all along — and drown them.
Since Dumbledore is too frail to fight and Harry isn’t quite strong enough, the inevitable happens: The boy trips, the Inferi grab, and into the depths he goes. Just as it seems Harry’s number is up, with the last blink of his eyes, he spots a flash of red. It cuts through the darkness above. Warmth fills the water, and a second later, he can no longer feel the Inferis’ grasp.
Harry swims to the surface. When he pokes his head out of the water, he can see but one thing: Fire. Raging, burning, darkness-crushing fire.
A pale Dumbledore stands in a tornado of light. Wielding his wand like a lasso, the all-powerful magician directs the fire from its center, raining wave after wave of scorching inferno upon their opponents. Harry manages to reunite with his savior, and, together, they fend off the attack.
The boy can consider himself lucky: Dumbledore brought his light today — and it made all the difference.
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When I turned 26, my dad quoted Hermann Hesse on my card:
“Stay as you are by changing every day.”
I don’t remember what present I got, but I do remember those words. Even though they technically weren’t his, my dad passing them on meant the world to me. In just eight words, he told me so much.
He told me he’d always love me for who I am, even if I was no longer the little guy building Duplo trains in his office. He acknowledged I was on a different path than he was — professionally, personally, any way whichever — and that was okay. He even encouraged me not to stop, for chasing change is what, ironically, makes us who we are.
They’re all like that, aren’t they? The best gifts are invisible. You can’t wrap them in fancy paper. Can’t send them in the mail.
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One day, while her husband was at work, Jai did the thing many a wife dreads most in her marriage: She crashed both their cars at the same time.
As she pulled the minivan out of the garage, Jai heard the dooming yet familiar crunch we all know from the movies — except this was her life, and yes, the convertible definitely took a hit, as did the van.
Imagine the cartoon episode of a day that follows: Jai paces around the living room. She bites her nails. “What do I tell him?” Jai hides the cars in the garage. She conceals the damage. And then, she plans to do what any good partner eventually learns: Make a bitter truth land softly.
When her husband gets home, Jai butters him up good. She puts on calm music. She asks him about his day. She makes his favorite meal. Eventually, however, the moment of truth arrives: “I hit one car with the other.”
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When she graduated high school, the father told his daughter: “I’m proud of you. Soon, you will move out and go your own way. I’d like to give you a going-away present. Follow me.”
The father walked to the garage and pressed a light switch the daughter had never seen before. A single light bulb lit up and revealed: Hidden in the back of the garage, there sat an old car. It was dusty, dirty, and clearly not in good shape.
The father smiled and revealed a set of keys: “I bought this car many years ago. It is old, but now, it’s yours! I only have one request: Take the car to the used car lot and ask how much they’re willing to give you for it. I’d like to know.”
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If your wife asked you to give a podcast interview with not just her but also your ex-fiancée, who happens to be a psychologist, how would you respond?
Andy Levine faced this exact question, and even though it sounds like a great way to blow your marriage, he said yes. Andy has been married to Sharleen Joynt, an opera singer and former Bachelor contestant, for five years.
In the 5th episode of their podcast, Dear Shandy, Margie, clinical psychologist — and Andy’s ex-fiancée — makes an appearance. Besides turning a terrifying prospect into an insightful conversation, Margie also shares the most concise list of relationship dos and dont’s I’ve ever come across.
She’s a true “bottomless pit of wisdom,” as Sharleen describes her. Here are the 6 most common mistakes Margie sees us make in dating and love — and how to avoid them so your relationship can thrive.
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My grandma has been married to my grandpa for over 50 years. One day, I asked her: “How do you do it?”
Grandma said: “You know, there were always times when either one of us could have left. But you gotta ask yourself: What truly better thing could follow?”
My grandma has never read a self-help book in her life. She does not meditate, and when she can’t sleep at night, she doesn’t buy blackout curtains, she drinks a warm beer. And yet, her simple words showed a profound sense of self-awareness.
Imagine your spouse just lost your life savings. After a heated argument, you storm off to think. In the midst of all the anger, you still remember that, even if you left them and found someone else, at the end of the day, we’re all flawed human beings. Each person has their own baggage, and while it may vary in size and color, there’ll always be baggage to carry.
Wow. Now that’s some powerful perspective. At an important crossroads like this, it might make all the difference. Instead of trading one person’s problems for another’s, you may decide to not throw away your marriage. To stick it out and find a solution together.
“That’s commitment!” I thought. My conclusion — besides the long-standing conviction that grandma was amazing — was that commitment was the most important value of lasting relationships. There certainly wasn’t a lack of commitment in my last relationship.
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