Advise for Advice

As a child, I once read, “ A word to the wise isn’t necessary, it’s the stupid ones that need advice.” As a child, I couldn’t really endorse this phrase, which was unusual for me (as a child) to refute anything I would have read in a book. I have always been a gracious recipient and an enthusiastic giver of advices, and felt it to be an integral part of any person’s life.

I would take advice from anyone older than me, for his or her experiences and seniority on the subject matter. I would take advice from my friends and my peers, the people I trusted. It was very evident from the start that advice must come from a source worthy of respect and faith. I’d often ask people for their opinion on my work, seeking not only their approval but also their insight to improve myself.

Consequently, I felt quite an authority on giving advices too. Before I had even starting filling my big boy pants, I was already going around telling people my mind, giving “my advice” if you will. I would be advising my friends about life or sometimes my little cousins about school to even my parents on how I should be raised … (I did convince them to send me to boarding school at 14)

However, I never took this exchange of advice lightly. It was very important for me to focus and ‘really listen – as my parents would say’ to any advice I would be given and then I would contemplate on how I would incorporate that wisdom into my life. And that’s the thing; I would often regard sound advice as wisdom. And to be equally beneficial for my fellow advice takers, I wouldn’t, and still don’t just want to advise someone without having a good amount of certainty that, first, I know and understand the situation, and second, my advice would sit well with the recipients of it. I would use all my knowledge, experience and imagination to reach a well-rounded and sound counsel for my peer.

It was only recently, when I sat to ponder about advises and the reciprocity of it, I started to notice something different. Something I hadn’t ever considered about the phenomenon of giving or taking advice to or from someone. I realized, a lot of good advice could be completely contrary to each other and yet be good advice in itself. For example, if I see a person fall off a boat into a lake, I could either scream, “Swim towards the boat!” or “Paddle your legs and flap your arms!” Both would be sound advice from my viewpoint, however, one might be completely useless if the person doesn’t know how to swim. In English, even our proverbs can be completely contradictory like “Many hands make light work!” and “Too many cooks spoil the broth!” While both are talking about multiple people working at one task, one insinuates more people would make the job easier, while the other implies that it would hinder the task itself.

This lead me to understand that good advice doesn’t just come from experience, knowledge or good intentions, but instead requires great empathy. Once a person can feel the integrity, intensity and importance of the situation, only then can that person be qualified to impart any wisdom onto his or her listener.

“ A word to the wise isn’t necessary, it’s the stupid ones that need advice.”

I could suddenly start to feel some merit in this sentence, and this is how I broke it down. It is virtually impossible for anyone, other than yourself, to evaluate all the numerous variables starting from your mood to the other possible people involved in the situation. In the ever-dynamic life and our thought process in tandem, we never really look at the same situation exactly the same as before (room for exceptions of course). It is almost pointless to expect someone else to take that one moment in time, to not only decipher the current situation of another human being, but also give counsel with utmost confidence that it will be of any help at all. And once, you understand that, more often than not, it makes you realize that it’s not actually advice that you were looking for, but more of an approval of a resounding echo of your own thoughts.

I am not saying one doesn’t need to take or give advice in life. That would be too broad and vague and probably not sound counsel in itself. However, I do feel a lot of the answers that we are searching for, confused about or even scared to face, are usually inside of ourselves and don’t really need an outside party to reveal it to us. I wouldn’t go as far as saying, that only the stupid need advice, but I do think it’s not stupid to not ask for advice, and just trust your own instincts instead.