Unsolicited Advice

May 21

Nothing gets my blood brewing like unsolicited advice. Maybe it’s because I like to try things myself. Or perhaps it’s because I just don’t like other people telling me what to do. Perhaps it’s because I get the sense from people giving me advice that they are somehow better than me. It seems to me that oftentimes the advice giver is simply someone who is older who feels like they must direct the uninitiated, and to me age is just a number that does not automatically entitle people to give advice.

I know that mistakes are not pleasant. Sometimes mistakes hurt. They might even hurt a lot. But just because something is unpleasant or hurtful does not necessarily make me want to avoid it. While I do not relish pain, I do appreciate lessons learned. No lesson is as well learned as one through a mistake.

As I go through life I have grown to appreciate silence from others. It’s a good thing to fall off the bike and get up to try again. The problem is that people that have fallen off of the bike before do not want others to fall off, too. They want them to go straight to riding perfectly. Or maybe they want to ban bikes altogether.

While I like trying things out, I can definitively say that I do not know much in this life. I know some things. I will learn other things. And hopefully there will always be people around me that I can turn to for some advice. The thing is, I only want advice if I ask. And likewise I will only try to give advice if asked for it.