Have at least one friend way older than you. They’ll show you what matters because they’ve seen what doesn’t.

Perspective is the one thing you cannot get from people your own age. Someone decades ahead has already watched a set of worries come to nothing and a few quiet things turn out to be everything. That sorting takes most people a very long time to do alone.

Find one person much older whose company you actually enjoy, and see them regularly rather than only at family occasions. Ask what they were doing at your age and what they would have skipped. Listen without hurrying it, since these conversations do not run to a schedule.