The Baboon Congress

you want a little advice?

45 Comments

Today’s post comes from tim

i am really good at giving advice

i can listen to a situation and have an opinion on the best way to go forward in a very convincing tone 99% of the time.

my wife hates this about me.

it is one of the things my wife hates about me.

i said i would get a blog in on friday and here it is. i meant i wold have it in to dale by friday but i am new at this. next week,,, this week  it is being sent in on friday and lord knows how the timeline will work.

since heading p the notion of the blog calendar it has come to my attention that poor renee has been the whole show for a while here and it is time for me to act because i care about this group.

its fun to hear all the different voices and the different ways of coming at it. bir throwing her ideas out there, jim does a nice job, steve is a master, clyde our blogger laureate with the bad hands (nod if they are getting better clyde) edith, crystal bay, linda (twice so far isnt it), jaque, vs and of course dale

pj ben krista have done one or two to our delight and …, last time i did this i left out renee and didnt mean to hurt her feelings so i apologize in advance for who i forget this time

so i need to ask for a once a month blog from each. more is great, less is not what im asking for

once a month damnit

we can do this

the advice i give to someone who doesnt have time to go on vacation or to read or to relax or to be with their kids, spouse friends is… put an x on your calendar. you never miss an appointment with someone elses x on your calendar make the same level of importance hold true for your own darn x.

i would never have gotten this done except that i put an x on my calendar saying it had to be done.

so the advice i give is perfect for everyone else. my family is all immune because they get to see where it is coming from. whats the old saying about an expert grows more in strength the further he is from home.

the other advice i have to offer is …be here now

whats the worst and best advice youve given and gotten?

45 thoughts on “you want a little advice?”

  3. Hmm. I am generally too stubborn to take advice from anyone. I am great at dishing it out, but I van’t claim that thosr I advise listen to me, either.

    DIL is a student advisor at a large college in SD. She loves her work. The only ones she has trouble advising are male students from countries in which women take a subservient role to men. They just don’t want to listen to her or take her advice regarding courses.

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    1. That’s interesting, Renee. I like to keep an open mind about human relations, always believing that two people can reach across cultural differences to create a great relationship. Time, however, has not been kind to several marriages I’ve observed between American women and men from countries that don’t value women. I now think marriage is hard enough under the best circumstances. If I were ever to advise a young American woman about to marry someone from a place where women are not treated well, I’d urge caution. (And I’d expect her to find my advice irrelevant and annoying.)

      I like your first paragraph. It is surely uncommon for anyone to make big life changes based on advice from others. When people now tell me to make big changes in my values or lifestyle, I ask them to tell me when the advice of others caused them to totally change. They can never answer. I usually request that they tone down the way they dispense advice and work instead at respecting people’s preferred way of doing things.

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      1. When Mankato first received immigrants from Africa, they had a problem with the young men who did not want to grant respect to women teachers. It was dealt with quickly and as an educational issue for the young men. They changed their behavior.

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        1. One of the joys of living in Mankato is watching the African immigrant children adapt to American ways. Many of the young women still wear the head scarf, but most do not. Their behavior (good and bad), their gestures, their language, their dress, and their attitudes are very American by the time they are in senior high, if they have been here since early age. The young men adapt in the same ways, of course. What is interesting is that Hy-Vee, the Iowa based company employs many of the young Africans. I have never seen one working at Cub, nor few minorites at all. They work in many of the fast food places and a few places in the mall. They are much better wit the public than most of their work mates. Wonder why that is.

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  5. I stopped listening to advice a while ago, which is kinda sad, because this summer, I had to make a decision and could have really used some wise advice. As it happened, circumstances took control and made the decision for me and I’m still not sure if it was the best thing.

    The reason I stopped listening to advice was because of a neighbor, who often is the kind of friend who makes it unnecessary for me to have enemies. If you need practical help of some sort, she’s one of the best. Call her at 2 am and she will be there. But as a friend, she dispenses unsolicited advice so freely, with no consideration for the type of person you are, or your specific circumstances, and without listening to hardly a word you say, that you give up trying to have a conversation and make sure you keep to the surface of things because any hint of a “problem” and she butts in and tells you, even orders you, what to do. Several years ago, I perfected the act of appearing to listen to her advice but really letting it fall off me like water off a duck’s back. She probably had a lot of “worst” advice for me over the years, but I can’t seem to remember anything specific.

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  6. I won’t mention the worst advice I ever got. I blame myself for believing that.

    Twice–that I can remember–I gave good advice. One of my firm principles is to not give advice unless someone seeks my help. But now that I think about it, I was given a green light to offer advice in both of the cases in which I spoke up.

    The first time I deviated from my usual practice was when I insisted that a friend bring a lawsuit against a man who had taken advantage of her. It is a complicated story. She was a miserable victim when I got to know her. When she finally told me what had happened, I not only had advice to offer but I actually insisted she follow it. I spoke words of a sort I never had used before (or since). I told her, “Sue the bastard! Sue him! Promise me right now, you will take him to court. Sue him!”

    She talked to an attorney the next day. He got as outraged as I had been. He told her, “I can barely believe believe the story you just told me. This is the most winnable suit anyone ever offered me. I’m gonna be a bee in his space suit! He WILL pay!”

    My advice proved useful. The guy blustered, threatened a counter-suit, but lost. And he paid.

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    1. I did not advise my m-i-l to divorce, I pressured her very hard. Took her to legal aid. It made the lives of everyone in that family better, including my f-i-l’s.

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  7. Morning all. Worst advice was actually good advice, but only with hindsight. You can never give good advice (especially unsolicited) about love to someone in love. Turned out my father was correct about my compatibility with my wasband but it took me several years to figure it out on my own.

    And now to business. tim, the google calendar won’t give me access. I put up the piece this morning that I wrote last week; just took me a bit to get some photos to go with it.

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    1. i will try to figure out how to make the calendar work
      how dare you post a blog without first entering it in my calendar.
      you may hove to do blog penance.

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      1. You have to share the calendar with others, tim. If you want, I can do it for you this time, but will hand it off to you after that (since the calendar is your baby). The document I shared with you should help you figure out how to do things.

        I still don’t know if a person can successfully share a google calendar or document with someone who does not have a google (gmail) account. If anyone knows the answer to that, let me know.

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        2. I haven’t been able to log into the calendar link you sent me. I have gmail and snail mail and AOL mail and work emails… pick one and tell me what to do?

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  8. Hardest but best advice from a friend when I told her my ex had announced before breakfast that he was having an affair…”learn to live with him having affairs or ask him to leave.” I asked him to leave.

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    2. I had to tell my neighbor and close friend that his wife, who was gone on a long trip, had had an affair with his best friend for a few years and was now probably with the friend, which she was. But he asked me. Then his daughter called if I knew where her mother was.

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  10. I try not to give advice; I seldom accept advice and then only if it comports with logic or with my already-formed opinion. There are two different kinds of advice– empirical, information-based advice (“Don’t take the freeway this morning. It’s backed up for miles.”), and opinion or folklore-based advice (“You should avoid eating anything with gluten in it.”). The cardinal rule with advice is: consider the source. By that I mean not just the advisor but also the substance behind the advice and whether it has any basis beyond opinion or rumor.
    The difference for me between an opinion and advice is that an opinion is an expression of my perspective. You are free to regard it any way you choose. In fact, knowing that my opinion has no weight beyond myself is what gives me the freedom to express it. It’s distressing to me when anyone feels obliged by my expressed opinion. It feels like unearned authority.
    Advice, on the other hand, is when one takes one’s opinion –fact based or otherwise– and presumes to use it to direct someone else’s choice. It’s possible, preferable I think, to make an observation but stop short of drawing an explicit conclusion.

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  11. Worst – Be like everyone else. (my dad)
    Best – Be different. – be yourself. (my mom)

    On the other hand, my dad was right to advise me to drop a high school boyfriend before I got in over my head…

    Still thinking…

    Later today or tomorrow I WILL look at the Google stuff, and start writing again.

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  12. I can’t remember any advice from my parents that I paid the least attention to. I drew lots of conclusions both positive and negative, however, from their example.

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  13. my dads advice came up the other day
    be aware that you are marrying your wifes mother. now matter how different they claim to be they are their mothers
    he is so right.
    my son has a significant other and he cant stand her mother. he doesn’t see that she is exactly the same person as her mother. he really gets defensive when it is suggested.
    my advice is never follow my advice.

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    1. my wife and i laugh because she is absolutely her mother and her mother dirves us both crazy. it is great that she can laugh about how her mother based weirdisms which are the cause for a continual angst in our house are too funny to not laugh at. i on the other hand have no issues that would be of note whatsoever.

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    2. Are you also saying that men are always exactly like their father or is it only to women that you are denying the possibility of individuality?

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      1. Unintended but accepted advice:
        One night in an annual staff meeting we were discussing if women tend to marry men like their father (the woman’s father). One of the girls, said she would never marry anyone like her father. (She was my next door neighbor who I referred to above.) We all tried not to laugh. She said her very serious boyfriend was nothing like her father. The other girls told her he was. She asked me and I said they were similar. The next day she broke up with him. She later married a man the exact opposite of her father. They are still married. But her boyfriend was crushed and has never really gotten over it.

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  14. best advice i ever got had to do with how to deal with people. when you go to the counter to grab two pieces of pie and you bring them back to eat and give to another person, always consider the piece that is the better of the two and give that piece to the other person. it is the key to being happy with yourself. if everyone did this the world would be the best place it could possibly be., one simple rule. i think jesus said something like it but without the pie

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    1. The man who set up my IRA told me in the long run the stock market always rises, which of course it does. Then when I pulled out much of it to pay medical bills and related costs, he called me and argued I should not. But I did. He never called em again because you cannot call from jail.

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  16. I gave some good advice today. I texted a friend and told her that if she hadn’t gone outside yet, then she should. (The advice was unnecessary; she was already outside.) What a beautiful sunny day.

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  17. Advice To a Girl

    No one worth possessing
    Can be quite possessed;
    Lay that on your heart,
    My young angry dear;
    This truth, this hard and precious stone,
    Lay it on your hot cheek,
    Let it hide your tear.
    Hold it like a crystal
    When you are alone
    And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
    Long, look long and you will be blessed:
    No one worth possessing
    Can be quite possessed.

    – Sara Teasdale

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