As I walked out on the porch this morning, hot coffee in hand, I was once again met by bitter cold weather. I told myself; my advice to me is to go back into the house. And my thought was it is better to be warm and active than cold and bundled up.
This brings me to the topic of the day. Do I use advice or do I just relate thought when talking to others about situations or events in their lives? I know that when I was in my 20s I was full of advice. Even though I did not think I had all the answers I certainly had advice to give to everyone. The problem with advice is that it is built on the premise that the giver of the advice is right in his or her views. Advice may be cheap but it is usually given with serious consideration to help the poor person who’s receiving the advice.
And my 30s it was easy to give advice on how to stay slim and be healthy and still drink beer. I was full of advice for those people I arrested. While waiting to be processed the poor arrestee would get an earful of my advice, like don’t do drugs or quit smoking, such jewels as, learn to control your anger or stop feeling sorry for yourself. These bits of advice rolled out on a regular basis. As if the person I was talking to had not already heard those bits of advice or already knew what to do.
In my 40s I started to realize that all those preconceived ideas I had about people in life came into question. As one arrestee put it to me, “well isn’t that just white of you”. This was after I just given him some advice on how to get out of the projects and into a job. By this time in my life I had experienced the surprise that I was not always right. Statements like- “if it hurts when you do that don’t do that” -were so lame. Advice that I thought was surely common sense came into question of, what is common sense. Being able to work in a city of multicultural and environments, helped me come to realization that what is common in one area is not in another.
In my 50s and 60s I realized that it was time to quit giving out advice and it was time to open up and tell people my thoughts. The nice part about the thoughts is that it is your thought and you and everyone has a right to their own thoughts. Thoughts are not necessarily right but they open up the possibility of a different answer to the same question. When I first started this blog I wanted to make sure that somewhere in the title the term thought was present. That way I felt that I was not telling somebody what to do or whether they were right or wrong, but giving them my thoughts on a situation.
I received a phone call from my oldest son, who now is 44 years old, and we had a long conversation without my need to give him advice. I’m proud of my son and his family and the last thing they need right now is some advice from pops. When giving advice it sounds like the person giving the advice knows what’s right and wrong but the person receiving advice does not. I am sure that my son has followed the same path as I. That is of giving advice in his earlier years and not expressing his thoughts in middle-age. Yes son I said middle-age. As I spoke to him on the phone I told him that our next father to son talk would probably be about Social Security. We both laughed and went on with our conversation.
So today’s thought was about giving advice. You may be a person who feels that when you give somebody advice it is in an effort to help them, not to judge them. So I ask you to reflect on when others were giving you advice, particularly when they did not understand the situation you were in. As they got older they were supposed to have some wisdom. I believe you should try to pass on your thoughts on what matters to you. I am positive that all the advice I gave in my life was not always right or correct. But I feel better now that I express a thought; you can listen to it, you can act on it, you can laugh at it and you can throw it away. It is just a thought. The weight of a thought as noble as freedom can move a person to do great and unusual things. Not all thoughts a great or noble. However they should be expressed and created to be used anywhere you want.
Pops
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