For reasons that will always elude me, astound me once explained, and will probably never be believed, people come to me often for advice.
I never quite know what to say, never have a little internal library of some kind of hard-earned knowledge or wisdom bequeathed to me by some generous benefactor or spiritual leader long since dead and gone. I just tell the truth, all of it in its unvarnished glory, and only really know a few minutes after they begin reacting if it was taken in a helpful way.
Today, I’m going to just straight up offer unsolicited advice to ALL of you, and I’m going to do so in a single sentence. I’m even going to call it what I titled this entire newsletter, the subject line that landed in your inbox before you clicked in to read this. There’s a reason today is the day I’m so irritatingly generously donating this wisdom, this gem of higher knowledge, and it too is a simple one. Today, is the birthday of the love of my entire life, my wife, my weef, my best-friend and travel buddy and partner-in-crime and the one who makes me, well, me. I purposely made it clickbait, because I wanted as many people as possible to come read it:
The Single Greatest Life Hack I Know
Oh the mystery.
Ready? A single sentence to change your whole entire life:
Fall in love with someone Better than you.
Marry them, if they’ll have you.
Handfast yourself to them, then do it again every year plus a day later.
Now, I can hear the comments already erupting, I can hear the rafters echoing with the contestations:
“But Tyler, Better!? That’s awful!” “You shouldn’t ever think someone is better than you!” “Better HOW Tyler?!”
Better. And I stand by it.
Not better as in better looking, not better as in smarter, more charming, richer, or of a nonsensical higher rung on the social ladder. Not better as in they have a “better” job, more friends, or have more stamps in their passport. Not better like funnier, more stylish, or their family name is one revered in the town or state you live in. Still though, Better. I’ll explain.
I fell in love with someone better than me. Truthfully, in every single way, but that’s neither here nor there for what I speak of today. This is a rant of a thing, a birthday rant for the one I love more than all things, and when trying to figure out how best to honor her, I just kept coming back to this: More than all gifts for her, she’d rather me give something to the rest of you. That’s who she is. That’s what this advice is today, a gift because she is the reason I learned it. A gift, because I live in perpetual awe of her better.
Fall in love with someone better than you. This is her gift, the one that keeps giving every time I look across a room and find her looking back. The ribbon-less package each morning I wake and find her still sleeping. She was born this day, a number of years ago I will not divulge, and the seismic shift on this planet has been evident ever since.
When I speak of better, I speak of the kind of better she is. This is the only type that matters, the only classification I refer to.
Better as in someone who is a better human being. Who is filled with more grace than you ever understood yourself to deserve to witness. Better as in they treat all people with more kindness than you imagine possible, they open their arms, their heart, their forgiveness, without ever being asked to do so. Better as in never performative, never dishonest with their empathy. It is not something manufactured, rehearsed, or offered with a single sliver of self-serving. Better as in refuses to let anyone cry alone if she is near, as in laughs loud and true and tells stories with her entire body.
Better in the type that Ted Lasso tried so hard to impart by way of misquoting Walt Whitman, the kind that makes her curious but never judgemental. Better in that she gives because she cannot not give, because she doesn’t want for anything if everyone can’t have something.
Better.
Better, because by the sheer happenstance of being in her presence, you become better, too.
They say every 7 or so years, every cell of your body is brand new. We regenerate, we begin again. Truth is, in the 16 years, 11 months, and 27 days since I met her, I am new in ways three thousand miles deeper than my silly little cells.
I am better because I love her. I am better, because she made me so.
Fall in love with someone better and you change, all of you, all of the time. You see more, you notice. You listen more than you speak, you look out with wonder at the world, not cynicism. You imagine you wear the shoes of another and take steps in them, more than this, you run a marathon in them, all to understand what they might not have the words to say.
Fall in love with someone better and suddenly all the inconsequential bullshit just seems to slide away. What remains, the sediment that decorates the ceramic at the bottom of the empty tea mug that is your life, is only that which truly matters. It’s kindness, it’s empathy, it’s joy, it’s forgiveness, it’s patience, it’s grace, it’s healing, it’s calm, and it is love.
It is love.
Today is her birthday and she’s the type of better that makes her wish for absolutely no fanfare or recognition, though she does love a birthday. It’s her birthday, and so I just wish to give her the outpouring of appreciation for being precisely as she is, as she cannot help but be. Tell her what she means to you by clicking the button below. Tell her how much you appreciate every unannounced bit of kindness she’s ever offered.
I love you Weef, more than I’ll ever possibly be able to conjure up the proper words to tell you. I promise I’ll keep trying though, keep spilling them out until something finally makes enough sense to stick.
Happy Birthday, and more than most things, Thank You. For you, for your planet-sized heart, for your ocean of grace. Thank you, for being exactly as you are.
Thank you, for being better.
I love you all.
Be good.
Find someone better,
and never let them leave you.
You’ll be better, too.
