I’ve gotten a lot of advice over the years. I imagine everyone has. And I’ve given my fair share, as well, I’m sure. Probably more than I even realize, because when we’ve been through something ourselves, we really, really want to impart that knowledge somewhere, or else why did we go through it? What’s the point of slogging through the hard stuff if no one wants to hear our wisdom and save themselves the same heartaches, or at least be inspired by our bravery and fortitude?
The crux of advice, though, is that when we need it most, we probably don’t want it, don’t want to need it. Or, as author Erica Jong once said, “Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.” Or, we get good advice but at bad times, and so we contort it, clinging to it. When I about 22, I called my grandmother, crying from the side of the road at the airport in Pittsburgh. I’d left my fiancé at the passenger drop-off to go to a job he claimed he hated because it kept us apart, and he was tired of being on the road 3 weeks out of each month (in retrospect, his being on the road 3 weeks a month probably kept us together). “If you love someone, life is too short to be apart,” my grandmother said. And it was such a romantic idea that I called him and told him I’d pick him up right then and there, possibly not exactly what my grandmother had meant. And I did, and we joyously went out to celebrate, heedless of the income we’d just lit on fire, and of the rules of professional behavior that dictate some notice before just not getting on a plane.
It wasn’t that my grandmother, one of the wisest people I’ve known, gave me bad advice. It’s just that I took it out of all context, because advice is like that – we hear what we want to hear – and embraced it like the last life boat on the Titanic. And truly, that ship was already going down. Months later, when I called my best friend sobbing on the penultimate day before my wedding (there was a lot of crying in those days; not a great sign, really) as she drove across the country to be a bridesmaid, it wasn’t the first time that she expressed some concerns about the upcoming marriage, while my mother said, “All we lose now, Rebecca, are deposits.” In retrospect, advice I could have taken to heart. I did better the second time.
But we have to make our own mistakes, after all, even when everyone around us, and perhaps even ourselves, can see them coming from miles – or months – away. Mistakes are part of the dues we pay for a full life, Sophia Loren said, and if you can’t take life advice from an Italian screen siren, who can you trust? Let’s just say I’ve made some doozies, and not for lack of good advice.
I recently went to a baby shower, my first in years. It’s funny how a few years and a few thousand diapers and equal cuddles and some stitches (theirs) and tears (mine) can change your perspective. Parenthood is a condescending clique at times. We don’t mean to be, always. Sometimes we do. But life does change when you become a parent. This is not to say that choosing not to be a parent is a lesser choice. In fact, owning that choice, with its lifetime of well-intentioned, weirdly-personal questions, is pretty fearless, and there are days when I will outright envy the freedom, and the money, you have to jaunt to locales more exotic than Chuck E Cheese.
Weddings and baby showers are really classic places for both solicited and unsolicited advice. It’s tradition to have a fishbowl or fancy-wrapped present in which to put pearls of wisdom for the bride and groom. In that moment when you’re just starting out as a married couple, there is probably a mountain of good advice to take to heart. And yet, in that moment, we think we’re on top of it. We are the exuberant cake topper couple, smiling ear to ear in this frozen moment. When we realize that maybe we could use a little bit of outside wisdom, the wedding affects are boxed up in a far corner of the crawl space where there are bound to be spiders. And again, we make our own mistakes, and then give others advice about it later.
At the baby shower, there a number of women in attendance who had children long since grown, and there was also a brand new mother, with her brand new month-old baby. We agreed that every baby shower should have a tiny baby there. It makes the whole process seem pretty legit, and makes for adorable photos.
As the shower was wrapping up, we were asked to go around the room and give advice to the mom-to-be. Most of the older women in the room, who for the record are amazing women with amazing life stories and are extremely nice, love the mom-to-be and have watched her grow up, said versions of the same thing. Enjoy every minute. Savor the short time you have with this miraculous baby. This is absolutely true. The years since I’ve become a parent have flown by. My oldest daughter is taller than my shoulder, and with my youngest, we have to do a very elaborate and choreographed lift, like Ice Capades, for me to still be able to pick her up. I sometimes get a little bit of the feels when I watch that Subaru commercial where the daughter grows up, right before our eyes, and then drives away in the Subaru she grew up with. Some days when I drop my daughters off at school, and watch as they transfer from me, to the crossing guard, to their own paths (literal paths) for the school day, I totally get it. I sit there and feel tears coming. I drive away and keep them in my rear view mirror as long as possible, knowing that one day – and it will come soon – I’ll be in theirs. It feels impossibly, exquisitely painful. And this is just me on a random Monday.
Again, though, giving and getting advice is complicated. With absolutely no disrespect, a new mother needs more faceted advice than to simply savor the moment. And this is where it gets a little more complex than a Subaru commercial. Retrospective advice has the amazing weight of experience, but also the soft focus of years. To be told, as an anticipatory mother, to hold on to each moment as much as you can, to love the late night chances to soothe and comfort, is a truth a parent realizes as soon as their child is born. It’s a truth so huge, it knocks the breath out of you. But 6-months ago, that that mother was able to leave the house in five minutes flat, showered and with hair that was only in a pony-tail because she chose it. Parenting is so hard. It’s about marveling about every eyelash and tiny toe, but also about being peed on, and oh-so-carefully peeling off a ruined one-use onesie after your teeny, tiny volcano explodes. It’s about a new dynamic, good but different and sometimes hard, with your partner, and feeling like you’ll never leave the house on time again, or sleep again. Or not know fear again. To tell a new mother only to savor the experience, without also saying, And some days you will feel lost and alone and yet be totally touched out when your husband gets home, is unfinished advice.
Advice is almost always fragmentary, though, isn’t it? It’s filtered through our own experience, through time, through the lens by which we live our life, our regrets and our triumphs, to say nothing of the desire to validate our own mistakes by saving another from them, even when those mistakes are theirs to make.
And yet… what advice would I give my own children? Because obviously I keep a growing list: Don’t worry too much about your successes in life before you’re 18. Or even 25. Those are just testing grounds. Live alone at some point (I never did). Never let anyone define your self-worth, and don’t doubt your intuition. But make sure you court doubt about science and religion and relationships and politics, because anyone without doubts hasn’t spent enough time thinking. And then believe in something big enough to keep your focus and forward trajectory when you’re ignoring all my good advice, and making those mistakes we all saw coming.
I’m not saying that we should give up on advice. We have a need to give it, and sometimes it may even wing its way into someone’s heart just exactly when they need it. But there’s a reason that we have so many cartoons with gurus sitting on top of mountains. We’re all searching. In the end, though, we’ve climbed the mountain ourselves, haven’t we? The guru is only there to award points. Maybe instead of giving advice, we can just share our experiences and let the words fall where they may, and be there for our people in the meantime.
That’s what I would do… if I were you.
