Advice

Tempted to offer someone advice?

What I say will sound paradoxical; but let there be one exception.

DO NOT.

There is nothing riskier than this futile exercise of giving advice.

Firstly, no one wants one. Do not be misled by the earnestness displayed while seeking one. If they hear what they wanted to hear, they would go ahead and do it and then blame you when things go wrong. If they do not hear what they wanted to hear, they would ignore what you advise, will go ahead and seek a second opinion, a third and so on till they come across one who will tell them what they want to hear and proceed with the same results.

So, you see, it’s all just a waste of time.

No, am NOT a cynic.

I do exactly the same.

Children obey orders. They are the first ones who allow this mirage to take root that we are capable of giving advice. We say something, they follow and we come to a wrong conclusion, that we offered a sane advice and they could benefit.

The wise plays the fool.

Thus it comes to pass, in the later years, a wise one with a vested interest plays the cards, well, wisely. They lull you into a make believe scenario, where you wallow under the mirage that you have made a contribution, whereas you just played the script that someone made for you, without your knowledge of course.

There is this wonderful scene from the film Life is Beautiful describing such a scenario,

Guido serves the doctor a light meal of Salmon, salad and wine. But the doctor is not interested as he gets busy solving a riddle Guido puts to him.

The kitchen is closed, and in walks a school inspector from the ministry.

Guido serves him what the doctor refused.

But, how?

Inspector: I know the kitchen is closed. Maybe a cold dish.

Guido:  It's all delicious. Take your pick.

Ins - Something light.

Gui - Well, we've got meat, a nice heavy steak...lamb, kidneys, some greasy breaded liver. Otherwise, there's fish.

Ins - Fish.

Gui - We have... a nice fatty turbot...eel stuffed with fatty sausage and greased with Grand Marnier...      or some lean salmon

Ins -The salmon, thank you.

Gui - Side dish?

Ins - There's a side dish too?

Gui - Of course. We have very, very fried mushrooms... buttered potatoes in Nancry butter with a flaky sauce—

Ins - Is there a small, light salad? If not, nothing.

Gui - A light salad? What a pity. The very, very fried mushrooms...were out of this world. So, a light salad...a lean salmon and a glass of white wine.

Ins - Perfect. As soon as possible.

Gui - I'll do my best.

At this moment, Guido walks to the next table, picks up the tray and places it on the table of the inspector who is left speechless at how fast the meal, that he personally selected, had arrived on the table.

There are enough instances in our lives, to make it absolutely clear that advice is a meaningless act. To the best of my knowledge, am yet to see an advice accepted. But we are too vain to notice them and at times think we have been able to advise someone.

The spouse who asks the other half (am being gender neutral here, in the current situation where the kitchen jobs are shared by both, though in the earlier days it was always the wife hoodwinking the husband) "what would one like to have for dinner", usually ends up making what had been decided hours before, by taking the same conversation like the one between Guido and the inspector.

It does not matter who the person is, what age group; none matters. They uniformly (mentally) click the recycle bin option even before the advice is finished.

Despite a 100% hit rate of spurned advice, the amount of advice that is dispensed is stunning.

Funnier still is the agony aunt column in the newspapers.

“My husband is not interested in sex anymore. Am having an affair. I feel guilty. What should I do? Should I tell him? What do you suggest?”

Seriously!

You expect a meagerly paid, under-qualified, non-employable nobody, making ends meet by writing agony aunt columns, to tell you if you should open your mouth or legs?

As if the question itself is not inane enough, the said columnist goes on to offer some advice. The advice runs along the lines of “If you ride a motor powered two wheeled vehicle, chances are it is a scooter; or if it is raining, and you are out in the open without an umbrella and no shelters in the vicinity, chances are you will get wet”.

Advice of such nature are not to be followed, and I have no qualms when those are turned away.

A son asking his parents if he should pursue data mining, cloud computing or data warehousing is fairly simple and straightforward. The parents have no clue and they would need about three days of Google search to understand what it is all about. Anyway the son asks for this advice to win a wager that he had had with his friend “I bet that my folks won’t have a clue about what I am talking about”

The opinion that a spouse asks about the weekend plans are in the same category of “what would you like to have for dinner?”. It is already decided, and the entire conversation is engineered to reach an already agreed proposal.

The discussions at the workplace are no different.

Your bosses do not want to hear anything different from what they had already decided. They know for certain that they know better. They are bosses for a reason, right? If you are smart, you play along, pretending to engage into a discussion knowing the endgame. If you enter with a misplaced notion that the whole thing is actually an open discussion where options are going to be evaluated and a decision is indeed pending to be made, well……….

Your peers do not want your advice. By conceding that, they would concede that you are better than them. Heavens forbid!

And the juniors, well, they are young, more techno savvy, and believe that solutions are available just a click away. They are also confused with the amount of information dump that is available to them. 

They are surprised that information, knowledge and wisdom are three different things. 

And let’s face it. In quite a few cases they are reasonably more intelligent than you were when you were their age. And let us grudgingly accept that some of them are more intelligent that what you are today.

They don’t need you, most of the times. And the only times you can really help them, they are too vain to approach you.

One often confuses experience with knowledge.

And information with wisdom.

Out of this misconception rises all the proffering of unsolicited, hence not entertained, advice.

The following, fictitious, conversation nails it.

My advice.

Don’t advise.

I just did, didn’t I ? One never learns.