How to Lead a Good Life: Advice

After reading a blog about some life advice…, and another about the simple things in life (a topic I know my mind wanders to when I’m working round four in the morning), I thought I’d compile a few of the great pieces of advice I’ve heard and took to heart over the years.

The more often a man feels without acting, the less he’ll be able to act. And in the long run, the less he’ll be able to feel. C.S. Lewis from “Scretape Letters”

When I was a teenager, probably my biggest obstical was how much I was in my head, always thinking, always wishing I had done more, said more, acted more. I think most teenagers, at least by appearance or stereotype, have the opposite problem, they have to learn to control their impulses. So you can imagine how alienated I felt, usually feeling a bit too controled, almost incapable of joining in on the fun and being carefree. Mostly though, this piece of advice was a warning to me about regret. I was tired of regrettig all the opportunities that had gone by, from standing up to people to asking girls out. When I read this in “Screwtape Letters,” a collection of letters from a veteran demon to his young demon nephew, it called out to me; this was exactly the fate I was headed for. I typed it out, pinned it to my wall, and reminded myself of it every time I felt passionately about something.

Don’t try to change your mother: she’s been the way she is a helluva lot longer than you’ve been the way you are. Fred Wood (my father)

Those same teen years were difficult for my mother as much, if not more, than they were for me. I think both of us were pretty obsinate, and there was a lot of struggle as I tried to stretch out my independance and she tried to reign me in. We’d get into these massive fights, sometimes, and I, the connsumate arguer, would chide her for her inability to rationalize. How she ever managed to get so emotional over these discussion, I never understood (note the past tense), and I made sure to remind her of the many parenting flaws she was demonstrating by now allowing me this or that privellage. And so my dad told me this once, and it kind of smacked me in the face. On a lot of points, he agreed with me, but this was his way of saying, ‘you can be as right as you want to, but being right and making things work aren’t always the same thing.

Hard work never killed a man. Sottish proverb.

Raised to appreciate my Scotch heritage, I had heard this a lot, growing up, and promptly tucked it away with other bits of sound, and duely forgotten bits of advice. Until one day, while waiting in the lobby of a big-deal, New York marketing firm, I read this, chisled into the wall. It struck me as being so interesting, because immediately, and I just know I wasn’t the first, I thought of all kinds of examples to the contrary. Remember that ol’ tale about, I think his name was, John Brown, a fellow so big and massive as to weild the hammer like ten other’s might. I don’t remember much of the tale except that somethin’ fierce drove him to just keep a hammern’ away at that railroad. Actually, now I remember it was to beat a machine, I think, something like that. Anyhow, he won, but it killed him. Hard work, killed him. After that you can just look at the average cardiac troubles of older, hardworking men. Enough said. But the point for me was how funny and interesting an idea it was. It’s clearly that kind of chiding advice that really means, ‘git off ‘yer lazy arse and do some’n.” And it’s right, too, in a lot of ways, because I think you’re generally better for it.

Buy women flowers. Mr. Ghere (9th grade biology teacher)

To understand why this made such an impact you would really have to have taken the class. Mr. Ghere was amazing. As a teacher, he was ruthless, almost Draconian in his rigid set of guildlines and expectations. Many a kid was shocked to discover that he wasn’t kidding when he said, miss three classes and your grade dropes a letter. And then couple this strictness with his real love for life. “Buy women flowers,” he said. “Women like flowers. Men, don’t be idiots and not do this. It’s easy to do. It makes them happy, and it shows them that you care.” (Since I’m on the feminist reactionary board now, I’ll quickly note that, by god, he was not insinuating anything demeaning about women here so I just wont hear it.) And it turns out he was right. Men are always told this in one form or another, but he made it plain. Women like flowers. Buy them some.