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A Word of Advice…on Advice
Joe Queenan, The Wall Street Journal
A few weeks ago, a neighbor I like very much came over for coffee.While inspecting the vast record and compact disc collection that takes up a large part of my living room, he suggested that I load all my CDs onto a server to clear away the clutter(1).He also said that I should convert my LPs(2)to MP3 files and get wirele speakers installed in every room.I said thanks, those are really great suggestions.But I am never going to do any of this stuff.My wife is always telling me that yoga(3)will help relieve the pain in my lower back.She is almost
certainly right.Yoga would probably be an immense help to my aching lower back.But I am never going to a yoga cla.Prompted by these unsolicited(4)comments, I got to thinking about the last time I had taken anyone's advice about anything.I couldn't remember.It was certainly far in the past.Maybe when I was a kid hitchhiking(5)at night and a trucker told me to stop accepting rides.At night.From truckers.Mostly, I could only remember advice I had ignored: Don't give up a great job.Don't give up another great job.Stop giving up great jobs.And don't write for right-wing(6)publications;you'll be slitting your own throat(7).I did not take any of this advice.The very nature of advice makes me avoid it.Alan Goldberg, a Philadelphia-based psychologist puts it this way: “When somebody says, 'You should do something,' the subtext(8)is: 'You're an idiot for not already doing it.' Nobody takes advice under those conditions.”
The U.S.is addicted to advice.Americans honestly believe that someone out there knows how to fix all our problems.Maybe Oprah.Maybe Dr.Phil(9).Maybe Barack Obama.Newspapers, magazines and television are filled with advice about health, finances, raising children, dieting.Why, then, are so many of us miserable, bankrupt, overweight chain-smokers(10)with horrible, illiterate kids?
I polled(11)my friends, asking if they took advice, solicited advice, gave advice.I also asked: when was the last time they'd followed anybody's advice.No one had the answers at their fingertips(12).Most said that they hated being asked for advice because if the decision to take that job or marry that sociopath went south(13), they would get the blame.As for when they last took advice, just about everyone said, “I'll have to think about that one.” Most of them are still thinking.I am often asked for advice.I am constantly being approached by people who say, “You seem to know the ropes(14)around here.” I do.Or: “Now, you're a man of the world.” I am.As such, I ceaselely give advice to those who aren't men of the world, those who don't know the ropes.Rarely do they take the advice offered.Seeking advice you have no intention of following is a time-honored American tradition.It's a
compulsory exercise before getting to the main event: doing something unbelievably stupid.It's a way of putting a patina(15)of intelligence on a foolish, impulsive decision, making it seem like one iota(16)of thought actually went into the decision to marry a woman named Galactica or invade Ruia.“You have to think of advice-seeking in a wider social context,” says my daughter Bridget, who is getting her Ph.D.in neuroscience at Georgetown(17).“Asking for advice is a way of engaging with other people,interacting with other people, while simultaneously putting off a difficult decision.But it's also a way of spreading responsibility so that if things go south you have other people to blame.”
Good advice, once taken, is not eternally treasured.Sooner or later, if you give a person a piece of breathtakingly good advice that changes their lives, they will come back to punish you for it.If you tell someone to quit a job, sell a condo(18), write a book, make a movie, or ditch a girlfriend, and the decision turns out to be the right one, the day will come when your friend will not only deny that you ever gave them that advice but will spread rumors that you actually gave them exactly the opposite advice because you are an envious, brain-dead schmuck(19).Sooner or later, everyone wants to be a self-made man or woman.I am not a self-made man.Thirty-three years ago, when I was going broke writing lighthearted(20)
satirical fiction, an editor at the Kansas Quarterly toldme to stop sending my stuff to literary magazines like the Kansas Quarterly, and to try getting published by the mainstream pre.I did.I might have done that anyway, but I still think of that note as the advice that changed my life.The editor didn't sign his or her name, and I never bothered to find out who he or she was.In other words, I took a piece of unsolicited and not particularly flattering advice from a complete and utter stranger, and it totally changed my life, and I never even bothered to thank them.In my defense, the note was a rejection slip.Helpful Vocabulary:
1.Clutter: me, disorder
2.LPs: Records
3.Yoga: Form of exercise by stretching the body
4.Unsolicited: Unasked for;given freely
5.To hitchhike: To ask for a ride from strangers;in the US, people hitchhike by standing next to the road and holding out their thumb.6.Right-wing: Conservative(in US politics)
7.To slit your own throat: To do something that damages yourself;to make yourself look stupid
8.Subtext: The implied meaning
9.Dr.Phil: American psychologist with television talk show
10.Chain-smokers: People who smoke constantly
11.To poll: To ask questions and record the answers
12.At one’s fingertips: Readily available;easy to acce
13.To go south: To go wrong
14.To know the ropes: To be experienced
15.Patina: Veneer;shiny, beautiful outward appearance
16.Iota: a small piece
17.Georgetown: A prestigious university in Washington D.C.18.Condo:From condominium, an apartment unit that is owned, not rented.19.Schmuck: Loser;someone who is not succeful
20.Lighthearted: Fun or funny;not serious
