Every single time I read the the Rabbit blog I get inspired. It's not the first time it's driven me to write.

It's her advice. She just gives such blunt advice and I just love her for it. Just like Carolyn Hax (you can find her at the Washington Post's website, but you have to register so I didn't include the link) -- but more brutal because Carolyn has to be fit for the paper.

Rabbit gives me hope that maybe wisdom could be communicable and makes me want to keep trying. I don't think it really is, but I can hope.

See, Rabbit is, like me, in her 30's. In your 30's, you just have an entirely different world view of your previous life. You finally understand the true value of experience, and finally have the haunting realization that no one gives a shit about your experience because they think they are different from you and think they will never, ever make the same mistakes you made.

Being in my 30's also actually makes me look forward to getting older. I think that if I have learned this much so far, then how much more do I have to learn and gain and grow? HOW exciting! How boring to be young. Sure, you can button your too tight jeans without lying down and you don't have that wrinkle between your eyes, but you are dumber than dirt. No matter how smart you are -- dumb.

And I realize that there will come a point that I will look back on where I am now and think the same thing, and I think that's pretty cool.

I also think that it is way too bad that you can't communicate this to people who are younger in a way that will make them care.

You really are going to wish you had voted and not had ice cream for dinner so often and didn't skip going to the gym and never took up smoking and didn't sleep with quite so many random guys and finished college and followed up on that great idea you were too scared to invest in and taken that great cross country car trip with your girlfriends.

You are going to realize that what they say about regretting the things you DIDN'T do is really true.

You are going to realize that it's important to build a life that is about being true to you. And this life cannot be built on the backs of friends and family who tried to support you. It's important to try to be kind, but not so kind that you let your best friend buy that dress that you know makes her look like a cow.

There can be too much kindness.

And some things really are just things. You can let them go -- you can release them. When you lose something that truly matters, you completely understand the value of letting go.

Live from the Mountaintop --

Heather