Advice

Obviously, to find their way around, most of the time most people rely on their own perceptions. If they are crossing a room and they see a table three feet ahead, they don't wait for someone to advise them of the fact. Instead they simply walk around the obstruction and keep bopping along. They can't and don't want to depend on others to tell them every step they should take, even though there's a surprising number of people around who feel that it is their mission to do just that.

Along with many other quirks, I seem to have been born with the determination to apply the same principle of self-guidance to every other kind of matter as well, even in those highly complex situations for which others seek the word of clergymen, counselors, psychiatrists, political leaders, talk show bozos, and the like. So far that kind of do-it-yourselfery hasn't been fatal, to me or, as far as I know, to anyone connected with me, though I've always been aware that I am, like everybody else, in no way infallible. Tables a few feet away are much easier to see than are the decisions that the Fates have made but have not yet set into motion.

For that reason it has seemed best to me to give advice only to those who are totally unlikely to take it, and that includes everyone I know. Maybe you can say the same, and that's not all bad.

That way you avoid feeling responsibility when they start tumbling into the ditch. While you will regret seeing this happen, at least your remorse will be eased a little by the forbidden sentiment that the psyche can't avoid entertaining if only for a moment and that if expressed aloud would go, I told you so.

--That is, unless it turns out that, out of spite, the person took that disastrous course solely because it was directly opposite to what you advised. Still, in that case you will at least be able, eventually, to lighten up on the remorse with a clear conscience, because then you will see the person as guilty of that most unforgivable of crimes: willful stupidity.