To Give Advice

Another day and before sleep so I surf the YouTube main page for a few minutes. A popular concept video is “giving advice to [insert age group]” and it dawned on me that I am old enough to be the one giving the advice.

What would my LIFE advice video look like? It feels strange to be conferred so much authority over such a winding topic that’s uncomfortably personalized and projecting and yet people still click on it. “Here’s how to never waste your time ever again!!”

I figure whatever “advice” someone would want from me is buried somewhere in this website. Though sometimes the “axioms” by which someone lives isn’t explicitly stated, fairly enough.

A good question to ask is whether advice actually helps. Or are we lined up on our series of fated moments and the act of “advice” is only a marker in your tapestry?

The CEO of SoftBank sought the advice of the CEO who established McDonald’s throughout Japan, amassing a billion dollar market-cap in the process. Through sure grit the to-be CEO, only sixteen years old, strong-armed a 15 minute meeting. Asking for advice. And it was advised to go to America to study, to learn English and computer science, and thus you now have SoftBank, as he took that advice wholeheartedly, quitting his Japanese high school to start his journey.

The CEO story is amusing, of course, but I think the “advice” in that story was post-facto anyway. The guy had the determination to do whatever it took, and the “advice” was only a marker to his goal unfolding.

I suppose “advice” ought to matter in-so-far that, whoever you’re “receiving” advice from, well, you better want to be like them. Like who they are, today. Maybe this is part of the amusing folly of all of these advice videos. They’re specialized to each era of the advisor, and however the hindsight is reified it’s still hindsight. However much hindsight and however many “top 10 regrets of the dying” videos surface to screen, I don’t know, I’m not sure if that’s going to work out. The “advice”, whatever power you want to imbue in it, is dead out of the water.

I’m not discounting the value of learning from others’ mistakes. Not at all. I just think the advice is given in a “negative action” sense, e.g. “DON’T do this” instead of “DO this”. Everyone already has a thousand of “don’t do”s and frankly I think regret is inevitable, so I’m not deluded enough to think if I accrue enough life advices of random YouTube videos I will snatch a less painful future. A future where I am not catatonic on my tatami tracing the fly’s path by the half-lit ceiling.

Yes, I think advice, if you do seek it, needs an intention already defined. Vague life advice doesn’t jive with that.

Thus, assuming that “advice” is only valid from the angle of, “listen to these words only if you want to be them, today, as they are, forgetting all hindsight”, and that you already need to have an intention well defined, well, I still have no clue why anyone would want my advice or anything from my life/lifestyle. I think I’d rather spare anyone from such an aspiration, frankly.

Through-out my life I’ve often adorned the role of the “counselor” though. Which is distinct, in my crude definitions, from the “advisor”. In a single way. That being, the “counselor” doesn’t have any answers. The answers come from whoever is being consoled.

It’s smalltime art honestly and I think a good chunk or anyone reading this vaguely picks up half of it. Still, you can easily ruin the “counselor” role, slip back into the “advisor”, strong-arm how you need to do this and that to find your slice of enlightenment this coming autumn. Of course, I slipped up often in the beginning, but then you learn no one wants to hear “shoulds” or concrete plans, majority of the time.

The entire function of the “counselor” is just conversation, I think. Frankly I’m convinced all change comes from within, and thus you can merge into the background as the counselor while their inner change happens, conversation as mild conduit, or nothing. The conversation may, in fact, do nothing too.

The “advisor” sometimes assumes there’s a one true path, but I guess that’s something I’ll admit. I’ll admit that I’m not so sure about that.

I think all thoughts, and therefore plans, are broken, in their own special way. Some people have broken thoughts vertical, some diagonal, maybe it’s a cheesecake slice or a muffin (however absurd) and wherever the crumbs get sourced it’s still missing chunks, it’s still raw in some parts. Seeing as all thoughts are limiting, and the “advice” genre, more often than not, is a hope to “clean” up the thoughts rather the life thereof, perhaps this is why I am partial to the “counselor”.

Because sometimes people think they want advice, when they really just want their thoughts to stop.

To let the story hang in the air, whatever hilly breeze, and terminate the hangup. Forget about the impasse, and how that horrible, horrible dinner party last night… throwing a paper plane of a letter; to hope it submerges in the distant seawater.

Yes, I’ve decided I have no advice.

But we can share the silence: I think everyone needs some.