Open your eyes. Observe what’s around. Consider what you see, process it, understand it. 

Eat something. Drink something; preferably water. Clothe yourself. Slip on footwear. Step outside your home.

Breathe the fresh air-- you only can for so long. If you have to, close your eyes and focus on the oxygen traveling through your airways. Center yourself. 

Look up, around, down, about. Scrutinize over small details in the ground; sit back and bask in sunlight, gaze at the bright blue sky, lock your attention on a white puffy cloud. 

Remember where you are, what you know. Look around you. Find out what more you can know from your own perceptions and deductions. When you can discern nothing more, search for somewhere you can continue piecing together an understanding of it all.

Sit yourself down when you get there. Scavenge from your supplies paper and pencil. Allow yourself to enjoy the amusing murmurs of your peers all but harness your attention forward, toward the teacher, when the lesson begins. Follow along; note-take. Learn. 

And learn.

And learn. 

And never let yourself stop. Never let yourself think you know enough. Never lazily burrow your mind in ignorance, in the conceited notion that what you know is all that you need to know. Always know there’s more to know; there are more questions to be asked, theories to be formed and tested. 

Always listen. Always open your mind; consider all ideas and perspectives. Our understanding of what everything is forever evolves, so never get too comfortable with or cling too fiercely to an idea; a refined one is often lying just ahead. 

Existing intellectually is a challenging feat. Find others who can, when you’re not learning and figuring, ease the body, heart and self’s burden of holding up a head full of thoughts. Surround yourself with those who you can practice feeling, loving with and you’ll keep yourself from sinking into nihilism’s murky depths. If they begin sinking, lift them up with all your might. Knowing, thinking without loving is but painful and sad. 

Let yourself feel, and feel both the good and the bad. Repression is futile, like trying to force a floatie below water-- it just shoots back up with three times the force you applied on it. Express yourself. Cry. You’ll notice the harder you cry, the harder you laugh-- it's no coincidence. Forge a wide range of emotions for yourself to feel. Don’t limit yourself to convenient reactions and feelings. Feel what you need to feel, and you’ll grow able to feel what you want to feel. 

Let yourself learn from thought as well as from feeling. Explore the world intellectually but also sensorially. Plunge yourself into thought; plunge yourself into emotion. Learn to love and love to learn and learn with love and love academically. Always strive to learn better, to love better, because you always can. We are not gods. We have no achievable state of perfection. We only have improvement, limited in many senses but limitless in loving and in learning. 

Lastly, find someplace comfortable to lie down. Close your eyes. Practice finding peace in the blackness, in the smooth slip into nothingness. Rest your mind, your heart, your body; let your intellectual flame drop to a simmer then flicker until unlit. Let your heart’s loving warmth relax your muscles and calm your hyper cells and neurons. In the comfort of the night’s darkness, let your mind shut down. Exist without the burdensome gift of consciousness. Drift away into slumber’s oblivion, or into some dream. Just before you do, think to yourself, “That was a day. I just lived through a day,” and part your lips into a grateful smile. And just like that, you can live.