Let Me Give You Some Advice

It is that time of the year again when you'll find many "adults" coming out of the woodwork offering their opinions on what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and where to do it.  Specifically, I mean, where to go for college, and what to do for work.  If you read some of the comments individuals post online, it is clear that many individuals simply don't get it-there is little purpose in giving "advice" when unprompted.  Furthermore, there is a difference between offering "advice" and offering "insight."

Some of the worst comments I see on "college choice" articles go something like this:

1) The economic argument

"I went to school X for Y dollars.  My friend went to Z for A dollars.  We now make $$$ so clearly it made no difference/I was right/they were right."

2) The experience argument

"At school X, there is much more activity/ethnic diversity/economic diversity/research into some topic than at school Z, and this needs to be accounted for."

3) The ranking argument

"Everyone picks schools based on ranking.  That is all wrong and it is all a game."
"You need to choose a well-known, highly-ranked school.  That decision is more stable and secure."

When people offer up these arguments, they forget that the people listening (or pretending to listen) may want to be nothing like them.  I am living my life the way I choose because it works for me, and that includes allowing myself to indulge my hedonistic whims (hedonism being defined as accepting the inner emotions rather than trying to control them).  The things I have done/am doing/will do work for me.  It doesn't mean that they would work for other people, nor am I so presumptuous to think so.

I guess I will give some advice-the things that interest you, pursue them.  If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, and even so you still learned something (and ideally aren't beholden, e.g. through debt, from doing something else).  If it does work, all the better.  But just make sure when you do a cost/benefit analysis, you include all the factors that matter to you.  Simple.

Edit:  Thanks to Yuki for adding this:

"Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth." -Mary Schmich

Older and Possibly, Ostensibly, Wiser

Warning: Comments below may be seen as degrading, ignorant, or offensive.

Sometimes it takes writing an entire novel before you begin to understanding, or at least ponder, the lives of others.  My grandmother lost her husband to cancer before I was born-that is over 25 years ago.  Which means she will be spending something like four decades of her life without the man she (ostensibly) loved.  What does that feel like?

I think that now, having just finished the first draft of a novel I hope to someday publish, perhaps I have subconsciously been asking these questions for a long time, and explains why I somehow wrote various aspects of her life into my story, and am repeating some of her actions myself.  What makes her so enigmatic is that I'm not even close enough to her, nor do I know enough Taishan, to ask how she feels, and what she is thinking, if it ever comes back to her in a rush as she goes to bed at night, and does she still open the front door at night sometimes and look out hoping he will be there.  Does it just fade into the background, a piece of her that is always there? Do things her children do remind her of him?

I don't believe that there is such a thing as getting over someone you love.  Once you've loved someone, you will always feel something for them.  Even if you hate them, it is because you did in fact love them, as we can only truly hate those we've ever loved.  And a part of us never stops loving someone that we've truly loved.  While we're on that topic, I don't know if there can be such a thing as unrequited love (in relationships). It seems to me, and I could be wrong, that unrequited love is simply an infatuation or reverence, yearning and affection.  In a sense it means we are objectifying the person, keeping them as a possession.  Which I suppose concerns me, because it suggests that I have never truly loved someone.

(Can love be explained through economics? I've been told long-distance relationships are challenging, and don't work, but the true answer to that is that in the end, there was some valuation that can be summed up as one or both individuals in the relationship as having decided the other individual wasn't worth it to them for them to put in the effort to make it work.  Don't make the excuse that you had to let go of someone because you love them-either try harder or just admit to yourself the truth and get over it.  If you truly loved them, you would try harder and it would feel effortless).

But then, what exactly is love?  I beginning to think that feeling of love, that chemical or biological response we suddenly feel, is the same for everyone.  What differs is what causes us to feel it.  I don't know what it is in our nature that causes us to seek someone out.  Sometimes for me I suppose it is to feel more real, to have a cause for which to fight, or a person for whom to be courageous.  The action of loving someone with no inhibitions is itself an act of courage-we can only love as much as we are willing to be hurt, because when we love someone, we make our hearts fully vulnerable to them, and should we lose them, we hurt in proportion to the amount we loved them.

I go back and forth between thinking love should be easy and love should not be cheap.  It is something that must be unique and fought for, it must be tested and it has to overcome.  Love to me is passionate, visceral and hedonistic rather than practical and stoic.  I do think it should feel effortless to love someone, because if we love them the effort shouldn't feel like a burden.  Once it does, we have either fallen out of love or have stopped appreciating them. Look, Dan Savage, love cannot be casual-people used to be (and on occasion still are) executed for loving the wrong person.  We should all at least expect a bit more of one another in relationships by comparison, or don't call what you have by that name.

Having been burned, I've been told my feelings are not unique.  Which is fine with me-in fact it is great.   Because we aren't alone in these feelings.  And I guess I may sound really simple or self-absorbed by rambling on about these things, but my intent is to convey the idea that no one should ever hesitate to share such emotions.  Rather than end on such a negative note, I can say that I have been quite ignorant of these feelings my entire life, and inconsiderate or degrading towards others, and it took me to finally going through a heartbreak myself to have some level of compassion or understanding.  Being in the throes of love is the most incredible thing I have ever felt, and I sincerely hope to feel that way for someone again.