A Note for You, If You’re Having A Bad Day
Dear Friend,
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Don’t worry if nothing immediately comes to mind; I think most of us don’t have anything locked and loaded. Advice is slippery. No matter how old you are, you probably believe three things simultaneously:
You have a few things you could pass along, advice-wise, although
You actually don’t know anything for sure, so
You’re ready and open to receive the right advice when it comes. (But it so rarely does!)
Here’s some advice Baz Luhrmann offers in the evergreen “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” graduation address that played on the radio all the time over the summer of 1999. I copied it down into my diary, although I was just 13, figuring that if I memorized his advice early, I’d be advanced.
Don't waste your time on jealousy
Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind
The race is long and in the end, it's only with yourself
Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults
If you succeed in doing this, tell me how
Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements
When I was young, Baz Luhrmann on the radio sounded sort of like a godlike being, crouching on the other side of life, having completed it like it was a video game. He seemed like he knew everything, so I kept all my love letters, and now I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to do with all of them. A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me why I had so many letters and I told her it was because of Baz Luhrmann; then I realized how wrong-headed that was. I guess I thought maybe at some point, some aribter was going to come around and check to see who had all their love letters in tact, and the person with the most was going to get 1,000 points or something.
Actually, in 1999, Luhrmann was just 37 — the age I am now. I have no idea what good all these love letters are doing me. I don’t regret keeping them, but I also wouldn’t tell my students with any kind of authority that they ought to hold on to every single one of theirs.
Advice columns go back at least until the 1690s. The old ones are nearly unreadable. My friend Jessica Weisberg wrote a wonderful book a few years ago on the history of advice columns called Asking For A Friend. I highly recommend it; I gobbled it up in two days or so.
This looks old and real, but I can’t find a good source, so do with it what you will:
The thing about advice is that it is spun by mortal humans who are still living their lives, and who still have things left to learn. And the other thing is that people who give you advice aren’t actually giving YOU advice. They’re giving advice to THEMSELVES, twenty years ago.
Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of variations on, “You’ll regret it if you don’t have another child.” Another one is, “Don’t worry, you’re going to have a midlife crisis soon, and it’s going to be way worse than what you’re going through right now.” It is very possible that both of these things will be true. The advice that comes attached to these statements — “so you’d better have another child”; “so you’d better enjoy these pre-midlife crisis days while you still have them”; “keep those damn love letters, young Baz” — goes right through me, like the wine-bones scene in the Pirates of the Caribbean trailer. Because I am a new parent, and I am very tired, I don’t have space for the advice. It does not compute. So I receive it, and it tumbles out, and I feel sort of sick or sort of guilty.
“Do not give your baby tea, coffee, beer, or wine of any kind, fried foods, pickles, pie, lollipops, candy of any kind, nuts, pancakes, berries, ice cream cones, rich cakes, puddings or meat gravies.”
- Best Wishes Magazine, 1965
Here is important information: A lot of the things that people told me about new parenthood turned out to be true, and a lot of the things they told me turned out to be false. TRUE: I feel stretched impossibly thin. TRUE: The kid will not eat the things I want her to eat and sometimes this makes me cry. TRUE: She is sick literally all of the time and childcare is a living nightmare. On the other hand! FALSE: “Get ready to not get enough sleep ever again.” Actually, I sleep more now than I did before, because the kid is a great sleeper, and I sleep when she sleeps! FALSE: “You’re going to hate sending her to daycare.” I love daycare and think it is heavenly! FALSE: “You won’t be able to do anything you used to do.” Our friends help us a lot, and I do many of the things I used to do, and I enjoy them even more than I did before, because I savor them!
This is important information because when I was pregnant, there was constant chatter about “you’re going to experience this” and “wait until that” and it Drove. Me. BANANAS. Everyone’s experience as a parent is different. Everyone’s experience with pregnancy is different. Everyone’s experience aging is different. Everyone’s experience as a sibling is different. Everyone’s experience with a body is different. Everyone’s experience with illness is different. Everyone’s experience with death, grief, joy, sorrow, bird-watching, mushroom-eating, traveling, spaghetti-making, visiting childhood homes, sleeping in beds, going on the internet, ETCETERA is different. “You are going to” are not words that feel good to hear for most people. But advice is all about “you are going to.” And so there I have a bone to pick with advice in general.
So here is my advice to you, regarding advice. (I do see the irony in what I’m writing here, and I enjoy the irony.)
When you’re asked for advice, you might say: “I’m happy to share with you about my experience, and you can ask any questions you want.“
When you feel itchy about wanting to give advice, you might say: “I want to share with you about my experience! Are you open to that?”
When you are the author of an advice column1, consider the following disclaimer: “I am a mere mortal, TK+/-TK in age to Baz Luhrmann at the age he was when when he wrote the song ‘Everybody’s Free’ in 1999. Did you know he wrote that before he made Moulin Rouge!?
When you are reading an advice column and you disagree, you might think: Humans are so silly. We know so very little, and we try so hard to know so much.
When you are receiving advice, because someone wants to tell you about your life, you might realize: “Ah! I recognize this as not being about me at all. This is about this person’s life. I have permission to let this advice wash over me like a mildly unpleasant breeze rolling through the California hills.”
We are still traveling in the Boston-adjacent area, and we visited friends yesterday. That was healing. I believe in friends. Friends are my religion.
Thank you for being my friend.
Love,
Sophie
Parenting Paragraph
We have been traveling with T. On the plane, behind us, there was another lap child (read: under the age of two) who was “on his twenty-sixth flight.” His name was Max. He sat directly across from us on the flight and his parents (THE MONSTERS) never took out any kind of electronic devices and just, like, read him books and gave him wooden toys the whole time, and he never cried. In contrast, I felt pleased to discover that the toddler-sized headphones we bought for T when she was way too young to use them fit her well now, and she likes them. She sang along listening to a song about taking a nap and didn’t take a nap. (Although, eventually she did.) Nothing stresses me out more than bringing T on an airplane, but it’s never been a disaster. That’s not to say it can’t be one. She’s been on five airplanes. You aren’t supposed to give toddlers headphones OR lollipops. I’m so proud of myself for taking my daughter on an airplane, and I’m so proud of my adventurous daughter for bravely trying so many new things while on a trip this week. The best thing about this trip has been all the time I’ve spent getting to know her better. Here are some things about her I didn’t know before we traveled together:
She eats her treats exceptionally slowly, including fruit snacks, which she breaks into tiny little pieces before putting them into her mouth one by one.
She loves song parodies and finds them laugh-out-loud funny.
She doesn’t like to sleep in a car, but she likes listening to music in a car. She likes Beyoncé and Regina Spektor.
If she sees a banana, she wants it, and she’ll eat the whole entire thing.
Any yellow flower that looks like a dandelion she wants, including a dandelion, including a dead dandelion, NOT including the dandelion with all the seeds that you blow. She’ll hold a dandelion for up to four hours.
She likes to go into any puddle.
She likes to go into any ocean.
A small bird is a “bird, tweet tweet.” A large bird is a “duck, quack quack.” She chases both, and they are her largest motivators to move in any direction.
PS - I love advice columns, and read them all the time. I love the etiquette column in the Times, and I love
’s advice column because it is a beautiful treat, and she is ALWAYS RIGHT. I love advice columns. I know it seems like I’m slamming them, but they’re actually exempt from what I’m talking about here, and I think you’re smart enough to see that.
dear sophie,
i love this message. i love all of your writing and also i especially love THIS one.
"Friends are my religion." <-- this resonates hard with me, my friend!
i also LOVE advice columns. people are seeking help and people are offering it. it's beautiful.
(thank you for sharing about "asking for a friend." looks wonderful!)
so often, advice is unsolicited. i know this from so often giving unsolicited advice in the past. i have been asking myself for advice on how to do that less, and i have been advising myself to be patient and listen and leave space and time and room and rest and peace more. i'm doing my best!
finally, here's a story about a friend of mine who is one of the sweetest people in the world. she is also a private person so i'll just call her "R" and say that she loves birds and bridges and moments and writing poetry and her family and more. and here's the story:
one time she was working at a day job and she wanted to be doing things other than that. a woman that she worked with started offering her advice, thoughts on what she should do (unsolicited), and my friend thought this in her head and didn't say it out loud to the person but then did say it to me, as the thing she thought when the person offered that unsolicited advice: "you are in the same place that i am now. i do not need advice from someone who is where i am now. i would be happy to hear thoughts from someone who is WHERE I WANT TO BE."
and i thought that was beautiful.
the best advice, like the best comedy show, is solicited, sought after. i am always THRILLED when people ask me for advice and i have relevant thoughts to share. and i am always thrilled to see other people offering beautiful advice when it is sought after as well.
my advice to YOU, sophie, is to write this wonderful post and share it like you did. thank you for taking my advice before i even gave it.
love,
myq
PS i don't know what the best advice i've ever received is.
here are some nuggets i like:
“love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone...
it has to be made, like bread;
remade all the time, made new”
-- Ursula K Le Guin:
"don't just do something; sit there"
-- from the world of mindfulness somewhere i think
"life becomes easier when you learn to accept the apology you never got"
-- robert brault, it seems from searching online
"be kind whenever possible;
it is always possible"
-- the dalai lama
"read the book You're Not Listening, if you want to! i got a lot out of it and i think you might"
-- my girlfriend rini, paraphrased
My brother suggested that I learn to downshift before trying to smoke while driving, insight I’ve often relied on when multi-tasking.