A Few Guidelines

I think there must be something about my face that makes strangers want to give me unsolicited advice. Advice about the housing market, stocks, careers, marriage, children, how close to live to your parents, whether sun screen is killing us or saving us, and so on. Maybe it's the age I am. Maybe I remind these people of themselves when they were making these choices. Maybe they just go around telling everyone what to do with their lives.

Maybe it's my face.

Maybe I look like I am looking for something and straining to put the pieces together. Maybe I look like I need help. All of those things are probably true in different degrees.

To filter through all of this advice, I'm developing some guidelines or rules or clarifiers. The first is this: I do not take advice from people who have walked the path that they suggest and are still unhappy. If the path leads only to money or ambition or some kind of success that does not include the health of their person and their family, it's not where I want to go. There are a lot of unhappy people giving out advice trying to prove that they've succeeded despite how they feel. And maybe they have. But it's not where I want to be.

The second guideline is to avoid the advice of those who do not ask questions. If they were concerned about my well-being, they would ask. And I have learned not to trust the advice of those who are giving it for their own well-being only.

I think there will be more, but this is what I've decided so far.