Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Advise Me.

When you "graduate" from college, people want to give you advice.

I say "graduate" because I still have to take one more class in August (another thing people want to give you advice about, failing classes).

So for all intents and purposes, I "graduated."

Recently my father gave me a self help book from a female author who really gets him. Its title I can't remember, something along the lines of "How to REALLY get past your break-up." It's full of great idiomatic one-liners that punctuate the author's points. The paragraph about not stalking your ex's profiles on social networking sites ends with "If you don't want to get your hair cut, don't hang around the barber's shop!"

Thanks, no haircut, got it.

I read a few chapters aloud to my dad and sister, reading her idioms in a few of my well matured impressions. "If you hang around dogs, you're bound to get fleas!" sounds cooler as Cookie Monster, well a Cookie Monster that sounds more like Eartha Kitt.

I remember my commencement speaker at graduation. She was a fancy international journalist, impressively accomplished, New York accent. A portion of her speech explained how the study of humanities prepared her for her career and life. "My degree in humanities taught me the importance of communication, but it doesn't take the place of learning how to communicate in life."

Okay, those were not the precise words of her speech, but that is the way they felt to me as my brain processed them, hot in my itchy robe and fold-out chair. Her graceful and well thought out arguments sort of clumped together and formed that fuzzy, Charlie Brown's teacher ball of sound. I squinted my eyes up at the podium, hoping to cling onto some piece of her wisdom that would propel me to another state, any other state than my current numbness. Like a sad, hysterical one. Or a thoughtful, reflective one. Not my itchy and sweaty butt one.

It got me thinking about advice. I feel like I am getting advice from all ends of the spectrum: old, young, furry, sober, drunk, male, lesbian, well-meaning, bored, lonely, equally confused, angry, motiv-ed. All this wisdom flying in at newly porous me, permeating my skull and vulnerable, unemployed being until I get off the phone crying:

"I DON'T WANT TO EXPAND MY HORIZONS."

People, like the aforementioned two, give advice to help and guide those in a time of flux. I am, by definition of my age, education and maturation level, and relationship status, in a time of fluuu-huuuux. But I feel like these disciples of success, happiness, and life satisfaction are failing me a little. If my options are to "Shoot for the moon" or "You miss 100 % of the shots you never take," then I might as well live my life with a 22 caliber, aiming at the pie in the sky while during the day I run in circles like a discombobulated hamster, shooting hoops until its time to kill the moon again.

I wish someone would tell me to take a shower everyday. Go get your teeth cleaned, it's good for you. Read a book. Write down your thoughts. Go for a run (haha yeah right). Don't drink so much. Don't forget your mistakes, but forgive yourself. Buy more shoes.

I guess giving yourself advice is the hardest thing to do. But imagine that you have two parts, both of which can aid in "showing you the light." You and your dummy self are of one being, and can help each other out. Sometimes my dummy self drinks too much and passes out. BUT it was the right thing to do because my real self was all raw and pissed off and dummy self made any potentially embarrassing displays of wildebeest anger and drunken emotion impossible by consuming too many vodka sodas and being sleepy.

"Trust yourself, whether it be the real or dummy, because you never know when dummy will drink too much and save your real."

How's that for advice?

2 comments:

  1. i sincerely hope that i was the lesbian advice. if not, i will feel wholly unimportant. because as you may or may not know, i base my self worth on my connection to your blog(not even you.) so let's not even talk about fluxyyy.

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  2. ahah you are the only lesbo I would refernce my sage friend. :)

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