I had a short fantasy about Gwen Stefani at a traffic light in my wife’s car this morning.
The fantasy was about Gwen Stefani on a golf course: I was in my wife’s car because the Doblo decided this morning the weather was too damp for the windshield wipers to work.
The fantasy goes like this:
Mig: I’m going to catch 40 winks in the cart, Gwen. Wake me up when we get to the 19th hole.
Gwen: Okay, Mig.
Advice: see what I’m thinking with this is you have the cultural wisdom, the wisdom you grow up with, that which your parents or society in general try to impart. And then you have the wisdom you figure out for yourself.
There are usually good stories attached to the latter kind. Like, don’t try to climb stone monuments while drunk: I’d love to hear the story behind that one.
At a bookstore recently I was looking at a book about taking your life back at midlife (i.e. reclaiming one’s life, not committing suicide). It depressed me so I put it back on the shelf, but it mentioned the value of what we have learned, the wisdom we gain through living and so on.
Right there in the bookstore, I couldn’t think of a damned thing I had learned that anyone would be interested in. I suppose if I would apply myself, I could think of several. But application takes effort, so I’m just asking you for your wisdom instead, with stories where interesting.
I am of two minds about self-help books. On the one hand, I would like to help myself. On the other, most self-help books strike me as a single seed of wisdom (or not) expanded into a book by some twat with an editor and time on his hands.
Any of these pearls of wisdom here could be expanded into a book. Think of all the time and money we are saving when we post them here, and all the idiots we are putting out of business. I will go first and try to add a few after all:
- Again, to lose weight eat less. I am repeating this because the weight-loss book/etc industry is so large. This is all there is to it: burn more calories than you take in. Is that so hard? Get used to the feeling of hunger. Relax, you won’t starve – the food is available, you’re just not eating it. Skip a meal or two. Daily.
- Again, because the stop-smoking industry is fairly large: to stop smoking, you have to stop smoking.
- Relationships: avoid romantic relationships with people who have one or more screws loose. Also: if it feels weird, it is weird.
- Fashion: you can’t go wrong with a dark suit, unless you work in some fashionable industry in which case you don’t need fashion advice, or if you live somewhere where no one wears suits. But the world would be a better place if all grownups wore dark suits, at least the men. And drank whiskey. The women could wear little black dresses and they would all be hot and look like Gwen Stefani and drink gin.
- Woodworking: cut away from yourself.