I am slowly beginning to learn a few simple things about advice.
1. If someone doesn't ask, don't give.
2. If I don't ask, then I probably don't really want it.
3. You're never really in the right state of mind or emotion to give someone advice, unless you're in the exact same situation that that person is in.
4. It's easy to put yourself in someone else's position and say that you know how it feels, but you really don't know how it feels.
Let me explain each point.
1. More often than not, if someone is venting a problem at you, but doesn't ask for advice, it would be entirely pointless to offer them your piece of advice because it's highly likely that they are NOT going to follow your advice. So you'd just be wasting breath and energy and air.
2. Sometimes I just need to let it out and I need someone who will listen with compassion. But then again this is tricky because at the same time I want you to care even though you listening to me alone is pretty much a sign that you DO care.
3. This is tricky. People love giving advice, but they don't consider all the facts. I speak for myself too because I know that I do tend to give people advice, usually just people who ask for it because I have learnt and understood point #1 and therefore have learnt to not waste air.
But here's the thing, if you're single it's likely that you don't entirely remember what it's like to be in a relationship and so when you try to give advice to someone about their relationship, it might not always be the best advice simply because your state of mind and emotions when you're single is just not programmed to the feelings and thoughts of a person who is in a relationship.
And it works vice versa for a person who is in a relationship advising someone who's single. I can't quite explain the difference but I hope you catch my drift. Okay put it this way, if I was single, and happy being single and a friend who was having issues in their relationship came to me for advice, I'd probably be all in the spirit of "hey, he's totally not worth it and you're better off on your own". But if I was single and unhappy I might advice someone with relationship problems to "stay in the relationship and work things out because it could all be worth it".
It works the other way too. If I was happy in a relationship and saw a friend having relationship issues I'd definitely advice them to "chuck that motherfucker cos there's something better in store for them" whereas if I was unhappy in a relationship and saw a single friend who was upset about being on her own or perhaps contemplating dating someone, I might be in the spirit of "fuck that shit, relationships are just not worth all that".
Am I making sense to you? And this doesn't just apply to relationships. It applies to every part of life, relationships are just better to highlight because well let's face it, more than half of humanity has relationship woes.
4. It definitely is easier to say that you completely understand how someone feels about something, but you just never really understand. The reason for this, in my opinion, is simply the fact of history. This is a little something I learnt in Quantitative methods which kind of made me realise few things. And one of those things is that you can say and try to prove how much you understand someone else's predicament and feelings, but the truth is you never really do simply because you don't have the exact same past as the other person.
Again, using relationships as an example, it's pretty easy to advise a friend with relationship problems or a friend who's just had a broken heart but you never truly know how it feels because you don't have the exact same dating history as that person. You may both have had someone who cheated on you or used you as the 'other woman' or anything at all, but every relationship experience is different. It's never the same for two people. And seeing as people vary in their strengths and weaknesses, what may seem like nothing to someone else, what may seem like such a simple thing to be done, could be what breaks another person. "One man's meat is another man's poison." That is the simple truth.
Of course, it's inevitable that we sit down and comfort a friend with whatever advice we can think of simply because we care. But we need to know all the true facts before we give advice. Me? The only thing I cannot stand, absolutely cannot stand is when people say they can understand what I'm going through because sometimes, you just don't understand. No one understands everybody all the time. That's my point.
Anyway, I don't know if any of the above makes sense to you people, but it does to me. Just something I've been pondering for awhile.
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