A young friend with a young family asked for ideas about how to engage the future. He said, “I’m curious how others predict, plan, or invest in their personal future.” As Geezers the world over are quick to do, I offered a Four Point Plan for Perfection that included such homilies as “only work half days, but control when those 12 hours are scheduled.”
That point, along with the other unheralded three, are all variations on acetous old Max Weber’s admonition to work, save, and deny the flesh, and while they lack a certain joie de vi and depict an old mule harnessed to a turnstile – accurately, I suppose – they’ve worked well enough (for me).
Along these lines, another friend asked me just yesterday if he should accept a job running the regional division of the church denomination we belong to. He is, summarily, an old fashioned Social Justice Christian-Warrior with an impeccable education from a highly regarded theological seminary; he was asking if he should take on the management of a quickly devolving region of small town southern churches filled with a plurality of elderly, secret Baptists who openly lust for a Ted Cruz presidency. I told him that unless he was St. Paul, or insane, he ought to stay in suburban Seattle and enjoy the twilight of his career among kindred and progressive spirits.
Both of these rich opportunities to Know All and See All, which I am embarrassed to say I seized with some alacrity, met with a rather indignant silence. I shouldn’t have been surprised: advice is mostly autobiography, and when it isn’t, it’s often just an ad for your highly personal brand of vice: work-addiction vs. fiddle-dee-dee, piety vs. joyfulness… yadda yadda yadda.
Clearly, advice is rarely needed, and more rarely taken. It is a wonder then that it is ever asked for, or more wonder, that it is given. As a concluding unscientific postscript, perhaps we should follow Charles Bukowski’s example and “drink more, screw around more, and smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.” Or not. The bottom line is that you’ve got to walk in your own shoes. Enjoy the walk. Or not.