funny thing about advice. I have often always heard people tell me advice and then I have always considered the validity of the advice given and asked myself is it applicable to my life. There are many ways to consider advice.
There is the imperical sense. This is done by listening to the advice and considering the testible and experimental value of the advice. For instance, "Dont put all your eggs into one basket". Testible? of course. Take a dozen eggs and put them all into one basket. Then, take a dozen eggs and put one egg into twelve different baskets. Now, throw one big stone at the dozen egg basket and crush it, and then throw one big stone at one of the twelve baskets with one egg in it. Now, after this has been done you have one basket with no eggs in it crushed completely, and you have 11 baskets with one egg in it and one basket with one crushed egg. Tested and proven to be smart considering that if you divide your eggs, then you have a better chance of keeping some of them unbroken in the case of falling rocks.
There is the common sense. This can, of course, be tested imperically, but it also is advice that when you sit back and think about it you slap yourself on the head and say "duh! of course..common sense!" For instance, the advice "dont walk under a ladder cause it is bad luck" this can be tested cause if you walk under a ladder there is a chance someone is up top and someone might be clumsy and you might find walking under the ladder gets you beaned by falling debris. But, then this is just common sense, isnt it? I mean, if you are walking under something, there is a high chance that something might fall on your head. Of course you wouldnt say "dont walk under a tree cause it is bad luck" because, while there is a chance that something can fall out of a tree (acorn, leaves, branches, bird crap, elephants), there is a higher chance that a human is going to be clumsier or stupider and drop something than a tree or animal in the tree will drop something. So, this is common sense saying that walking under a ladder is bad luck cause you have a higher chance of getting beaned by falling debris than if you had walked around the ladder.
Then there is the mother/Grandmother sense. This is neither imperical or common sense, but simply advice given in a form of a warning that really doesnt make much sense in it, but you listen to it cause....well, lets face it, you listen cause mother or grandmother said so and, I dont know about the rest of you in the world, but personally I would rather do the running of the bulls backwards into the bulls (sort of like a suicidal salmon spawning up a stream of deadly horns and hundreds of pounds of charging hamburger meat) than tell my 100lbs, 5'1" grandmother that I am not going to listen to her. Some of the advice/warnings I have been given have ranged in the way of "if you fall out of that tree and break both your legs, dont come running to me" or when she mixed warnings/advice "you buttered your bread now lie in it". Not much logic there, but again, you tell grandma that.
So, yeah, back on track. I have always considered advice to be something rather interesting to listen to. Like the song said "Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth." (
http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/poetry/mary-schmich.html) However, I think I had a moment of clarity come to me today when someone gave me advice. Though, chances are everyone else in the world has already thought of this and come to terms with it and me, being the slower of the animals in the herd, am only now catching up to it.
A co-worker of mine, we just discovered, was in a car accident a week ago and hurt their back. They are going to be away from work for possibly another 2 months to mend their injuries. This news, coupled with the news of the Montreal shootings in the school brought one of my older co-workers to start to spread the advice of "see, you never know what is going to happen tomorrow so live for the moment now and dont let anyone else tell you what to do because it is your life" I got to thinking that this is true. My co-worker was on their 2 week break, having a wonderful time, no cares in the world, relaxing and then WHAM hospital city. Those students at the school out east were having a nice calm afternoon at the cafeteria, studying and talking and eating and WHAM one of them dies at the scene, 5 more in critical condition (at the moment) and a bunch more injured cause one guy decided that he had played one too many first person shoot me up games, or seen one too many action movies, or perhaps just read one too many true crime books about people that have just opened fire and realized that if he (as a pathetic piece of sand on the great beach of life) is ever going to be remembered for anything it is going to have to be something big and cowardly or else he will disappear into oblivion forever. The world is unpredictable and confusing so you cant plan for disaster or success you just have to enjoy the world around you as it happens and hope that it all works out.
Fine, good advice to listen to. Then, the second part hit me like a little man coming up being me in the 12 items or less check out line at the grocery store and saying "excuse me, I think that you have 13 items if you count those potatoe chips". "dont let anyone else tell you what to do because it is your life" Ok, good advice since it is my life, I am the one living it, I am the one going through it and I am the one that is going to have to spend the most amount of time with myself so I might as well do things that I am happy with. But, wait a second, if I take that advice and do what he said, then doesnt that sort of go against what he is saying? "dont let anyone else tell you what to do", ok, I wont let you tell me how to live my life and I will let people tell me what to do. But, if I want to be happy I have to live my life on my own and not listen to people, but you told me not to, and I am not to listen to people. So, unless I come to that conclusion myself and realize myself that I am to not listen to people, then should I be listening to you? and, if I am not to let anyone tell me what to do, then doesnt that make all advice people give ranging from the imperical to the common to the *GASP* grandma sense totally wrong to listen to unless you learn for yourself that you are not to walk under ladders, not to fall out of trees, and maybe I should put all my eggs into one basket. Doesnt this one piece of advice make all advice wrong to listen to? hmmmmmmm, strange.
