Never give anybody advice

I had a friend who once, very seriously, over a cup of lukewarm coffee, said “Look…I’m not going to give you advice. All I can do is speak from the benefit of my own experience,” and then proceeded to tell me what she did.

Not what I should do. But what she did. It turned out that she had attempted the very same thing I was trying to do, in a very similar way I had in mind. She explained how she had not taken into account how all the pieces would fit together, how unless all the pieces fit together perfectly, it was a fool’s errand she set herself.

And she succeeded.

But it cost her dearly in the end.

It was some of the best non-advisory advice I’ve ever gotten.

About 15 years later I was rereading The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien. I was struck by a beautiful passage on this very subject. For the uninitiated, the character is literally one of the oldest living things in the known world, a person who had experienced thousands of years in her life and all that came with it. When she was asked for her advice, she said:

“I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

If only all of us began our advice with such a sense of humility, and if unable to tell our own experience in the telling, would be mercifully silent.

So…I can’t tell you what to do. I can only speak from the benefit of my own experience, and maybe you can do better than I did, or at the very least, avoid the cost of success that I paid.

I do have one piece of unsolicited advice though; keep experiencing life, in all its wondrous variety. It will help when the time comes that some small adventurer enters your life, seeking help in finding their own way.