The Death of Advice

It’s not Friday is it? I was kind of hoping it was, but, as I watched the puppy vomit up something unspeakable just now, I realized that indeed, no, it is not Friday. We have to get through Thursday And Friday. And then Saturday and Sunday of course.

Time marches on like an ever rolling stream? Isn’t that a line in a song? What does that even mean?

I have the problem of what Matt calls Time Compression.

I make a big giant list and I put everything in the whole world on the list. On it are things like Call the Dentist, Clean the School Room, Write the Book, Write All the Lessons, Pick Up Glue at ACMoore, make Pie for Easter, Train Puppy, Buy Matzo for the Last Supper, and then like fifty other items. You can see that this is the worst kind of list. If you were to go read books about how to write a list, probably every book would be about how this is the opposite of how you should make a list.

And yet, day after day, this is how I make the list and try to stumble along through the day.

Even more troublingly, none of the things that I actually have to do every day, like school and concocting luncheon, are on the list. So even if I do everything I have to do every single day, I never get to cross anything off, because it wasn’t on there in the first place.

So where does the Time Compression fit it? Well, there sits The List, there sits my entire life, and the two really can never be reconciled. The list includes things that will take days and months and months to complete. Not broken down into manageable units that could be crossed off one by one, each whole project sits there, day after day, mocking me. The things that keep life ticking along flail around in my consciousness, me actually doing them, and the things on the list sit there and mock me, making me feel like every moment is a mockery and a failure.

I could, of course, do things differently, couldn’t I. I could just make some other kind of list. I could invent some kind of trick of the mind to make time seem like it isn’t some monster, waiting to leap out and bite me.

But that’s like saying to any other person–say the person who can’t keep from biting her nails–just stop it. Just don’t do that. Do something else instead.

Oh. Ok. I’ll just do that. I’ll just change who I am and be somebody better. Every one in the world should stop doing the dumb things they’re doing and just be better. And really, I’m sure my time problem is nothing compared to some other person’s Having Too Much Stuff Problem.

But the Internet, and humanity really, love to pretend that we can Just Be Better. I was reading something that could have been helpful about children, a nice long post full of good advice, and then I suddenly wanted to fling my device across the room. Because, well, advice isn’t the solution. And yet we try to make it into the thing that will make everything better.

Do it like this, we say. I did it this way and it worked for me. So now you go and do it. So then, you look at the shiny pictures and the total absence of dirt and think, oh my, that looks amazing, I will do it what way. And so you try, but it turns out that you, not being that person, cannot do it that way, because nothing about your life or personality or children is even remotely like her life. So now you have your own dumb habits, and her perfect habits, and are still unhappily trying to make your own life work.

“You know what you should do” is the line that haunts my very dreams. Of course I should do that. Of course I should rearrange my kitchen and my school life and my list making so as to be better and more productive and more holy. For the love of all that isn’t Trump, don’t you think I would be good and perfect if I Could?

I’m sure this must be some sort of puritanical capitalistic pragmatic undercurrent of American Moralism. Or something. I don’t really know where it comes from, but Americans love love love them some productivity and always trying to do things better. The homeschool movement thrives on always tweaking to make things better, to make the day run more smoothly, to fit in another whole course each year, to come up with the perfect life saving easy and delicious dinner. And every blog post and picture whispers those siren words ‘you should do it this way.’

So, there, I’ve illuminated the problem, so what I think we should all do is Stop Doing That. My advice is that we all stop giving advice, except for when it is really helpful. And how will we know when it is really helpful? Well, someone will surely write a blog post.

Actually, what I think I Should do, is stop being so tetchy and just let the Advice Culture be, and not try to cram my advice hatred down the throats of those who love it. Another solution, of course, is just to try to enjoy the things on the list, and imaging that God didn’t give me this work because he hates me, but because there is a of of useful and interesting work to be done. When I figure out how to do that, I will totally pass it on, so that you can feel bad about yourself some more too.