What Advice Has Really Stuck With You

I was thinking of gossip, chai. Finding out dirt and being interested in stuff that's actually none of my business.

Getting involved in something is a whole other thing. In that case, I decide what's my business and get involved. Thinking about this, I realize that this hasn't happened much. No siblings. No husband. No in-laws. So it boils down to friends and parents. My parents were my business. Friends, it depends.

The most important thing to know is what to ignore and what not to ignore.

That said, I supposed the advice that's stuck with me is advice I gave myself.

You can't rely on anyone else.

What about beyond friends?

I'm thinking of that old saying, "for lack of a nail, the shoe was lost, for lack of a shoe the horse was lost.....etc."

I can say, on the other hand, that the best of me was formed by people who gave me a nail, who didn't say it was none of their business.

just musing roberta, just musing.

I have put my nose into things I shouldn't.
I tend not to be silent but I'm trying to not pester someone, anyone, with my views, most of the time.

Once or more, I intervened when I should have, involving my niece. When we see each other, which is rare due to geography, we talk for hours or all day, sort of peers peering from different ages, since she is now a grownup and has her own observations, never unobservant observations, even when she was little. We are always baldly straight with each other and have been since she was ... well, since she was. That's the good deal of not being the parental figure. I modulated what I told her, re age, other's privacy, but didn't fib when she asked.

So, and what? in most cases, I don't deliver my present views unless asked in some manner.

My own experience is that I listen to sharp cracks of disagreement from people who know me, and sometimes those who don't know me at all. Once or maybe twice spoken cracks, even joking that I could think what I'm thinking. More than that, let me alone.

On review of my married life, I always mentally smelled disapproval from many, but they were wrong for a long time, and I was there in the marriage, not them. After which long time, they were right after all.
In reality, it was more complicated than that.
I knew what I was doing and remained interested. I stayed with a man eleven years younger than I was (still is) for twenty three years, but who's counting. We've been 'broken up' about fifteen years and have each become more ourselves, talk once in a while. I'd never get back with him and vice versa, but I'm not sorry about the marriage. Might like to snap some years off of the total.

I figure, Chai, that you are talking about the pool thing. I can see being alert to that. I think that thread got all befuddled - what, an a2k thread?
Rightly befuddled, but you might have also been correct. Or, as mentioned, off base.

I do think community eyes matter. Sometimes community eyes get people strung up on a tree limb; sometimes community eyes identify the explosive throwers.

I guess I'd say 'report', but with dispassion.

Bingo. Advice I've learned to give myself: Never expect or assume that someone else is responsible for taking care of you.

I've always been an independent-minded person--even as a small child.

If I want help or advice, I ask. I'm not keen on people telling me what to do. I suspect that this has not always served me well, but it's who I am.

Except where my parents are concerned, I can't remember a time when I injected myself into a situation where I didn't think I belonged. Didn't give out many nails. Didn't welcome many either.

I have to add that the help and support I've gotten from people on a2k got me through some very dark times and was always welcome.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm a colossal pain in the ass--but lovable.

It is strange the things that stick with you. It is in the circumstance.

Best advice from my mother, when she was being grumpy cleaning and I asked what I could do...
She snapped, "You have eyes, use them!"
I found that to be useful in all my jobs. See what needs to be done, and do it and before asking where something is, go look.

Another one that sticks with me. "Your opinion doesn't matter." Said to me by my boss, when I was repeatedly expressing my opinion. Yeah, sometimes it really doesn't matter. And that's ok.

Another from an older friend when I was joining a union. "Those people (in the union) aren't your friends." And he was right, when you are all going for the same few jobs, yeah, you're not really friends.

bou!

Hi! I'm probably here only for a minute....

Boy did THAT strike a chord with me.

I can remember my mother angrily saying to me several times "You're so damned independent".
For the life of me I could never figure out what was supposed to be wrong with that. Still can't.

What Advice Has Really Stuck With Me?

"Earthworms..."

Verily I say unto to thee if you lie with a whore and she gives you the clap....do not lie with her again. Bear 3:16.

"Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig."

I have told this elsewhere, but -
I have my life through admired the native American Indian and have been outraged that encroaching whites committed their crimes against them. I reverenced a vision of the wise old Indian, a man in tune with the Earth and his past and felt I had perchance met one that day in New Mexico, when I the hitcher got let out at a restaurant. He was standing beside the door, his greeting scarcely a grunt. I felt honored that he followed me in and sat next to me at the counter.

"Give my friend a hamburger," he told the waitress, who frowned.

"Give my friend a hamburger," he repeated.

She scolded the old Indian, who broke into a fit of coughing.

I got a cup of coffee.

As I sipped the tepid liquid, the Indian decided to impart a great wisdom upon me. "Don't ball up," he said between fits of coughing. "Don't ball up," he said several times.

I gulped the last of my coffee, paid hurriedly, and got the hell out of there.

In times of stress or trouble, I return to the memory of that encounter to draw strength from the old Indian's wisdom.

From my mother: 'Tend to your own knitting'

In other words - Mind your own business and make sure you have all your own rows straight before you start commenting on or messing about with someone else's.

From my father: 'There's enough prejudice in the world without anyone having to invent it when it doesn't exist.'

In other words, don't be overly sensitive to and/or invent bias - there's enough of it about already.

Did you aidan grow up in the midwest? Did your parents? That is very familar to me advise you got....

My parents were both Texans - born and raised.
I was born in Texas, but grew up in New Jersey because my father was transferred by his company from San Antonio to NYC when I was a year old.

It WAS very interesting. I had a very different New Jersey upbringing from all of my New Jersey friends, because my parents brought that Texas/southern flavor to everything in our lives - from the food to the parables.
My New Jersey friends LOVED it and were actually jealous of it, although they used to accuse me of making my aunt's and uncle's names up when I'd tell them after coming back from Texas what my Aunt Ida Belle had said or what my Uncle Bennie Mac had said. They didn't believe that people were named Ida Belle and Bennie Mac.
It all seemed sort of exotic to them.
I think I got the best of both worlds - the diversity and directness of New Jersey and the gentle wisdom of the south- combined.

My mother, they only person who ever supported my desire to be a musician (so naturally we were separated while I was young) told me I was going to live a certain amount of years and then die and that was that, so as long as I stayed out of jail and didn't hurt anyone to do whatever the hell I wanted, and to NEVER be concerned about what people said about me. That sort of stuck with me .