Brotherly advice

My big brother is five years older than me, and because he chose to double-major in math and physics, it took him five years to finish school. So we graduated on the same day - me from high school and him from college. He headed off to the peace corps, to Nepal, but before he left, he gave me this advice:

Patience
Confidence
Security
Individuality

These, he said, are pretty much all you need in the world to be ok, so do what you can to have them. It wasn’t often that my brother gave me advice, and this seemed good, so I wrote it down and kept it near my desk all through college. Five years later, we again graduated on the same day - him with a master’s in some kind of engineering, and me with a BA in English. His advice helped me to survive all sorts of drama relatively unscathed: bad relationships, post-teen angst, death, divorce, and even unbelievably large tax bills.

Fifteen years later, I still think it was pretty good advice.