Photo by J. Paxon Reyes
Advice is the parable of social interaction. Generations of
life enhancing self-help tips are passed on every day to assist each other in problems we can’t figure out by ourselves. But for some reason, it is always much harder to apply advice you have given to someone else, to yourself. Humans seem to have little faith in themselves, convinced that something has more integrity if it comes from someone else.
Well, to add to the pile of growing integrity, I have conjured what I feel is some excellent advice.
The next time you want some advice from someone but have no one around, write. Write exactly how you are feeling, but write it as if you are telling it to someone. Then read it back yourself. Tweak it so it reads perfectly in grammar that suits you (It doesn’t matter how ‘gay’ it might sound to anyone else) Then read it back in full. It will be as if you are reading something a friend has written to you, you will feel as though someone is on the same level as you, even though you are just levelling with yourself.
Of course I am not suggesting that this is a universal solution to giving advice, it’s just some advice…
“Have you ever experienced the scenario where you care so much about someone who doesn’t feel the same way anymore? Where you know that every time you speak to them, they give you fielding answers that are only semi sympathetic and sincere; yet you still hang off every word they say? You cling to a glimmer of hope that your heart has conjured in your delusions. It is the pinnacle of choosing between your head and heart.
What was once flowing conversation that filled you with a feeling of satisfaction and happiness; has now evaporated to surround you in a cloud of smoke that cocoons all that was from sight. You do everything you can to make the smoke blow away; you continue to talk to them, trying to squeeze any drop of enthusiasm out of them, but all the while you know your mind is just creating gaps in the smoke that do not exist. You are convinced that they still feel the same way but just don’t want to show it.
Then, like an arrow hitting your chest, you get the reply that slips through their brilliantly clever web of falseness. The reply that is just a little too blunt giving you glimmers of how bored of the conversation they really are. Your mind races to recover, to regain what you believe to be lost ground.
Then one day you receive the reply that stops you dead. It’s the one you’ve been dreading. The one that has kept you awake at night. Your heart has that certain feeling that is only felt when love is involved; when it beats hard, making your breath shallow, feeling like it is only just working enough to keep you conscious… Reality crashes back down to Earth. It’s done.”
According to Adrian 