Follow your dreams.
Confront your fears.
Listen to your heart. Or, as one poster that adorned my middle-school classroom, and likely a thousand others, read,
You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. (Extremely corny, but not untrue.)
That’s the thing about advice — it’s often general, but when applied specifically, it fits the contours of our lives and offers a way forward. At the close of this staggeringly difficult year, we asked you to share the nuggets of wisdom that carried you through. Find 10 responses below.
On a personal note, in recent months I’ve found myself questioning how deep of a commitment I’m prepared to make to my own creative writing. The best advice I received was along the lines of, “I know you’re afraid, but at some point, you’ve just got to take a leap.” And just like that, I saw a path.