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"Take my advice, I'm not using it"

Another journal entry. I get inspired in the morning and run off at the keyboard with my personal philosophy.

May 9/15

Saturday again; beautiful again. I don’t know. I keep telling myself I should be more unhappy, or not happy with what I have. All these people who continually exhort you to be happy with what you have: do they need to say it to you, or to themselves? And even if it’s to you, why are they so compelled to say it? What business is it of theirs what another person does? Are they so affronted by people who AREN’T happy with what they have? Do they have to be checked and corrected by someone with an obviously superior world view?

Why are we constantly being told how we should feel, how we should think? In the trivializing age of Facebook, etc., it’s even worse, with memes and other spiritual sound bites abounding, most of them patently untrue. It’s never “This is what I believe” or even “this is what I think you should do”, it’s “DO THIS”, as if the words are being passed down on high from Mount Olympus.

For God’s sake, don’t ask for anything beyond what you have already! At the same time, you can have absolutely anything you want in life if you try hard enough! (OK then, my order is in: 5 million dollars and a palomino pony.) And how about this one: never quit! Never quit! This is one of the most self-limiting things a person can practice, because sometimes quitting is the most liberating thing a person can do. It can release you from the shackles of trying, and trying, and trying, and feeling like a miserable failure because you “can’t succeed”, and what’s the matter with you anyway, shouldn’t you be able to have anything you want if you just try hard enough (and keep trying, and keep trying)?

I’ve known people who’ve gotten divorced, and when they tell their friends and relatives, it’s either “Oh NO!” (as in, a tornado just destroyed my house), or ‘Oh, nooooo. . . “ as in “my cat just got run over”, or – it’s harder to describe this “oh no”, but it’s a combination of grief, disappointment and bewildered judgement, as in “how in hell could YOU have let this happen?” These people, and that means most people, see it as a failure and even an unmitigated tragedy.

And there’s an even worse one, a sort of appalled, horrified silence, sort of like “my son was caught masturbating in class”. They just don’t know what to say.

So what of the people who have been in a miserable relationship for years and years, have felt alienated and alone, have fought bitterly and without hope of resolution, have endured infidelities and physical and emotional abuse from their partners? I’m afraid it’s still “nooooooo” from most people, because they have no idea what was going on, OR, they had full knowledge of what was going on and felt they should still stay together for the sake of the children. Or maybe they just weren’t trying hard enough.

Walking away from anything is a failure, even if, after walking away, you find the love of your life and are happy for the first time in your life. No, stay stuck, it’s more noble, and for God's sake keep your problems to yourself because talking about them, or even admitting you have them and couldn’t tolerate them any more, makes your friends and relatives deeply uncomfortable.

And that brings me to this point: gratuitous advice. Why are we supposed to be so grateful when someone throws buckets of unsolicited advice at us, when we either haven’t asked for it or have maybe asked them one small, simple question? This demonstrates several things. One, the advice-giver believes their view of things is far superior to yours, and by extension, you’re pretty incompetent at what you do and need to be set straight. Two, that you should be grateful for these stone tablets, even if you’re being  hit over the head with them. Three, that your obvious failure is an affront to them and, yes, makes them very uncomfortable. Buckets of advice douse this ineffectual, smoldering fire. Or so they think.

Advice-giving and homilies are a great way to shut someone up, usually someone suffering grief and pain. Here, have this, it’ll solve everything. You may go away now. Your grief and pain has just been corrected. I should know; I have never experienced anything like that! “Hmm, well, I'm glad that never happens to me. Here’s what you should do.”

It is the very rare person who can receive your pain, and do you know what? We usually have to pay them. Even then, real help is a dicey proposition because most therapists go by the book and say very trite things so they can congratulate THEMSELVES on what a great job they’re doing. And if your dismay and even anger persist, well then, you just have a lousy attitude and should correct yourself and adjust to the therapeutic environment. I'm giving you all this help, and you’re not “co-operating”, which means you're just innately self-destructive.  Sorry, I can’t treat you any more if you’re not willing to change.

I won’t get into such trite crap as “everything happens for a reason” (a baby dying of leukemia? School shootings? Al-Qaeda? The Third Reich? I could go on.) It’s almost as bad as "it's all part of God’s plan” (something someone said to me when my son’s roommate was murdered, his head kicked in in a parking lot by two "friends" after a bar fight). Or, worst of all, “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

Oh yes? Have you ever heard of suicide, or are “those people” outside the human pale?  I knew a lady who liked to say, “Our prisons and psychiatric hospitals are full of people who had more than they could handle.”

But hey.  I never have more than I can handle, so I can inflict this philosophy on you with impugnity. In fact, having “helped” you this way, I can dust off my hands and carry on, free from having to stare into the grief-stricken eyes of a fellow human being in genuine human pain.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Crap advice

Actual Facebook post, July 18/14:

Margaret Gunning

Sometimes I'm so tired it's like I'm living below the floor of
my threshhold of energy.

(FB "friend"):  Nice phrase, but -- ??? Overwork?
Or health issue? All kinds of safe-ish energy boosts
available, from matcha green tea to B12
to stuff like Adrena-tea and Rhodiola.

I think I'm just tired! I
said it when it was 1:00 a.m. and just really bagged. Um,
nice advice though.


Maybe it's too early in the day for a rant, but here goes. This is an example of the many things that gall me about Facebook. Last night I was well and truly bagged. I had stayed up so late I lost track. Still, it had been a good, even hilarious day, much of it spent with Caitlin and Ryan who act as a fizzy tonic to my sometimes discouraging life. I was just saying, Whoo, boy, am I ever exhausted. Wow. Can't even describe it!

So what did I get, from a complete and anonymous stranger?

Advice.

Not only advice, but advice delivered in a didactic and even judge-y way: "Nice phrase, but - ???" seems to indicate that I'm putting a lot of fancy words down on the page for nothing. (Three question marks seems like overkill to me. What? What? What?) Or for something: a cry for correction.  Being completely bagged, it could be I was guilty of trying to garner some sympathy, or at least empathy, and I failed miserably: instead, what I got was this. Then came the barrage of theories:

Overwork? ("Are YOU suffering from overwork? Fatigue? That tired feeling? YOU need. . . ").

Or health issue? ("Why aren't you looking after your health issue? and/or Why are you talking about your health issue here, which is completely inappropriate? Do you even KNOW what your health issues are, and what you should be doing about them?").

All kinds of safe-ish energy boosts available, from matcha green tea to B12  to stuff like Adrena-tea and Rhodiola.  (So here's the infomercial, not quite as if she is selling the stuff, but nevertheless magazine-like, delivered in a flat news report tone, implying - I think so, anyway - that for God's sake, don't I know that there are tons of "safe-ish" energy boosts that are readily available to alleviate this mysterious fatigue that I'm complaining about? It's solution syndrome, the thing that makes people with chronic conditions keep their mouths sealed shut. Here, I'll fix it for you - don't you even know about this, aren't you willing to even TRY this? - and then you can just shut up again.)

It's not so much the message (which is pushy enough: "the answer to this whole issue is blah") as how it is delivered. There is no sense of  "you know, I've had fatigue too. I've tried some things, and this really worked for me," or even "why don't you give this a try?", or even "Try this, dummy!" Such a tone implies, at least, wanting to help instead of a sense of "oh my, that's a very elegant phrase you just wrote there, BUT. . . ",  before launching into a lecture.

Another assumption, given the content,  is that I am automatically "into" herbal and alternative cures. Not that I haven't explored them. Through the entire course of my perimenopause (and PLEASE don't tell me how I handled this the wrong way!), I tried remedy after remedy, including some that nobody talks about now because they have been completely discredited as a useless or even dangerous waste of money and time/hope. Remember St. John's wort (now found to be hazardous and ineffective), soy powder (can cause cancer), and evening primrose oil (which might work if you dabbed it behind your ears)? All of those attempts went down the toilet, literally, and I finally went on the pill for a year, which almost instantly fixed everything - I am not kidding, the symptoms just STOPPED and never came back, with virtually no side effects. That was fifteen years ago, but I know some people would still think I was weak or brainwashed by the patriarchy.

I quickly learned to keep my remarkable cure to myself, however. If I talked to women about it, more often than not I got a look like this:

(Maybe that's why, throughout my entire life, most of my close friends have been men. Not politically correct, but true. As a rule, they're more direct and have fewer labyrinthine hidden agendas and unaddressed power vacuums. And no, they don't grab me in back alleys. Well, maybe once.)

Presenting a list of herbal cures to someone you don't know is insulting, because it makes the assumption that the stranger you are advising thinks they are relevant. Take them for yourself, share them with people you KNOW are open to them, but please, don't proselytize or try to win me over to your (obviously superior!) side. And if you must recommend, RECOMMEND, don't just present me with a laundry list which keeps you on the shielded side of vulnerable. Here. Here it is. Too bad you're the way you are, but hey, cheer up, I've got the cure.

For God's sake, I was TIRED, bagged, not in need of a course correction in my sad little life. But no. No "poor baby", not even a "tough shit". What really drives all this compulsive and automatic correction, beyond towering ego, is a profound discomfort with anyone else's pain. It must be "fixed" now, and at all costs. At the same time, the self-proclaimed savant can wear the mantle of mastery and gain admiration and respect. Pretty sweet deal, I'd say.

I won't name the person in last night's FB encounter, but she was a bossy-big-sister type, the likes of which I have encountered before and hope never to encounter again. But it will happen. Any time I have expressed any sort of vulnerability on FB, I get an avalanche of not-well-meaning advice from people who would really rather I shut up, because my statements subconsciously remind them of all the crap they have not addressed in their own lives, all the stuff they don't want to look at. I am annoyed and even infuriated by the quick fixes they spew, unsolicited, playing "expert" to keep from facing their own unresolved shit. 

This was not a statement of  "I'm tired, does anyone have any advice out there to help?" This was not a "I really need some herbal remedies that have worked for people." This was, "boy, I am so bagged I can hardly think straight." Immediately, like a suckering vacuum, my statement drew a sour and self-righteous, even judgemental weather report from someone I barely knew.

Who has been unfriended now. Because to be honest, she is no friend of mine.

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press 

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Amazon.com

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Chapters/Indigo.ca

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Frock on!

Weird things happen at Christmas.

Many of them are predictable. Every year, women's magazines run articles about How To Beat That Holiday Stress, using such techniques as placing cucumber slices over your eyelids or going to Acapulco for a few weeks with that guy from the tanning booth.

How this is supposed to help you pay your Visa bill, I don't know. They don't explain it.

There's also the inevitable How To Keep Your Diet Resolutions Through The Holidays piece, which tells you to fill up on plenty of bean curd before you go to the office party. Therefore you won't snarf up 3000 calories-worth of deep-fried fruitcake washed down with some sort of red stuff.

And, don't let's forget, How To Safely Thaw That Holiday Turkey. Don't you even think of putting it on the kitchen counter! Let it thaw slowly in cold water, changing it every half-hour, for 48 hours. (And isn't it worth it to set the alarm in the night? If not, just let it thaw in the fridge for 72 hours per pound.) If this seems daunting, try to focus on the results: a perfectly glazed, savoury 32-pound bird that you bear in on a giant parsley-garnished platter while smiling proudly in your gingham apron (not streaming with sweat and ready to scream).

Foo. My turkey looks more like the one in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (my fave seasonal movie: with the added bonus that it has Randy Quaid in it!). My favorite of these well-meaning but identical articles (which I suspect are recycled almost verbatim each year by exhausted magazine staff ready to go partying ) are the fashion pieces.

I saw one recently that said in its headline, "Party Frocks Rock". I've always thought "frock" is an archaic word, or at least very English, but it surfaces every year like annoying relatives. The word "retro" kept popping up too, a la Mad Men (and don't get me wrong, I live for Mad Men. But if I dressed in a wiggly sausage-casing like Joan Holloway, I'd be arrested.)

Yes, this year we will "bling" in the New Year, in which we must pick one essential "glad rag" for the season, something so radical we don't even know quite how to say it:

The dress.

I've worn these. Not lately, of course. I prefer pants because I don't have to shave my legs. Plus my knees are starting to look like rounds of unbaked Pillsbury biscuit dough.

But never mind, back to the bling. We will herein quote the advice of one Emily Scarlett, PR manager of H & M Canada in that centre of the Canadian universe, Toronto. (Do you detect a note of wire service here?)

Pick the right little dress, and you're fixed. "You can put a blazer over top and put on some thick black tights and wear it to an office function." Unlike on Seinfeld where Elaine and a co-worker make out like bandits, this particular gal's office parties seem pretty tame.

"And then if you have a holiday party at night with friends or family, you just whip off the blazer, throw on a nice heel, and bam! You've got a great going-out little cocktail dress."

The violent verbs in these descriptions always get to me: whip off, throw on (especially a "nice heel": isn't that a contradiction in terms?). It sounds a little like Clark Kent changing into Superman. If I "threw on a heel", I'd likely miss and hit the cat.

Besides, I like it better the other way: "whip on, throw off." Adds a pinch of Christmas/S & M spice.

But wait, there's more. "Retro-inspired embellishments are definitely welcome this season," the article continues. "The black, stretchy-wool Monogram Bow Dress at Banana Republic (various locations, $275), for instance, has a beautiful, oversized pop-out flower attached to the left side of its rounded neckline."

This seems to get into Carrie Bradshaw country, where only an unconventional fashionista (who's a size zero) could pull it off - oops, I mean put it on! But here also is some sage shoe advice, this time from Tara Wickwire, PR director for the Gap (based in - guess where?): "What's really fresh now is putting a nude shoe with a black dress. You see a lot of celebs doing that." I'm not sure what a nude shoe is, but you'd save a bundle just going barefoot. And what's this "shoe" business? I've even seen trousers referred to as "a pant". So what else, "a sock"; "a mitten"; "a glove"? Why does one side of the body have to get cold like that? It's winter, for God's sake.

Let's frock on: "Whatever dress you go for this season, you're going to have to accessorize, and most stylists are saying the same thing: statement pieces, statement pieces, statement pieces." I'm trying to figure that out. Does it have to say something on the front of your ultra-feminine Pleated-Organza Bustier Dress (BCBG Max Azria, $778), kinda like a "message" t-shirt? Obama Sucks? Free Randy Quaid?

Whatever. If we get pie-eyed and start doing a frenzied boogaloo at the office do, no one will notice what we're wearing anyway. Yet another Toronto-based PR rep from RW&CO says we must "choose one piece that's glittery and really own it." In other words, don't pull a Winona Ryder this season. Own it! Pull out that charge card! (And no buying it, wearing it once and taking it back the next day with a guacamole stain on the front.)

By way of illustration, I've included some glam shots of my favorite fashionistas displaying their finest retro styles. According to Gertrude Heathcliff, PR rep for Target, Inc., these iconic icons wear nothing but the most cutting-edge, backward-looking fashions, which they really own (plus they're iconic).

I mean, really.