on advice

both the giving and receiving of

Photo by Jevgeni Fil on Unsplash

I once did a long magazine profile of Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s formidable deputy Prime Minister. I went in the way I try to go into every big interview — curiously and respectfully with a heaping teaspoon of salt. I came away smitten, in part because she was principled, funny and clever, but also because of her house, which was a comfy, unselfconscious mess.

Anyway, when the time came to ask around for some outside quotes from friends and colleagues, Freeland’s team (which at the time consisted exclusively of multilingual severely jet-lagged 20-something gay men) sent over a long list of Dazzlingly Important People. Everyone who was anyone on the global spectrum of politics and business was — I swear to god — on this list. At one point one of her charming young gay polymaths called me up to ask if I had what I needed and I was like, ‘Well Alex, actually it would be really great to get a quote from the Obamas…’ and he paused then said, ‘Okay, hmm. Well, let me talk to the Minister and see what I can —’ and I actually had to tell him to calm down, I was joking.

So obviously I called them all up, and all these former and sitting Prime Ministers, billionaires, eminent thinkers, Presidents of this and Chairmen of that and the fascinating thing was that they all gave me a different version of precisely the same anecdote, which went roughly like this: “I first met Chrystia at X [insert Harvard/Oxford/refugee camp/newsroom/caucus meeting/Summit/Convention], and we hit it off. Then a few months later she called me up to ask my advice on X [insert professional/personal dilemma or quandary somehow related to Matter of Pressing Global Importance]. And now I consider her a very dear friend.”

Since then I’ve noticed that asking people for advice is not just something fantastically successful, brilliant, ambitious, high-powered types like Freeland do. It’s something almost all interesting people do, from all walks of life. And what’s more, they do it instinctively from a very young age.

“So what do you think I should do?”

I mean, it’s a great question, isn’t it? (Downright sexy if you ask me.)

Petitioning for someone’s counsel is simultaneously disarming and businesslike. It says, ‘I’m a problem solver but I’m confident enough to admit I’m uncertain and smart enough to know I might not be smarter than you.’ Viewed cynically you might even say it’s a way of flattering someone you admire while keeping the conversation focussed primarily on yourself and your accomplishments, a kind of super-stealth humble brag. It creates immediate intimacy without suggesting anything remotely untoward, and it really doesn’t matter what the dilemma is. Margaret Atwood once pulled me into the women’s toilet at a literary gala and, in a very sober tone, asked me to tell her honestly whether or not she’d put her eyeliner on correctly. Now that my friends, is charm.

So yes, asking people for advice is a form of canny, covert social seduction, a great way of cultivating friends, allies and mentors, building a network or just kicking off a sparky conversation. I once knew a bon vivant British newspaper editor who went out for boisterous boozy restaurant dinners almost every night. Just before deadline he’d ask everyone around the table what they thought he should put on the front page tomorrow. Once a consensus was reached he’d slip out and call up the desk. But here’s the interesting thing: He rarely took our advice.

And that’s because while asking for advice is a great thing to do for all the reasons I’ve just outlined, there is one thing it isn’t much good for, which is actually getting good advice.

Almost everyone loves to offer up counsel, but if you consider most advice clearly in the retrospective clear light of day it’s largely ill-thought-out rubbish. The fact that it’s well-intentioned rubbish or even rubbish-that-ends-up-being-correct, is irrelevant. It’s mostly rubbish because if you are a person possessed of basic reasoning skills, no one is likely know more about the various intricacies and potential ramifications of your dilemma it than you.

I’ve noticed this is especially true when it comes to big life problems and moral quandaries. It doesn’t matter how intelligent, trustworthy or experienced the person you’re asking for advice happens to be — almost all human wisdom is drawn from the specifics of our own individual hard-won experience, which is of course highly subjective, randomly acquired and as such far from universally applicable, let alone applicable to the very specific conditions and context of you and your problem — your life. So when you next ask someone, “What do you think I should do?” just remember their response will necessarily have more to do with them and their experience than you and yours. The one notable exception to this rule are good lawyers — and that’s why the charge the big bucks.

Having said that, there is great wisdom to be gleaned for free in this world. Loads of it, in fact. It’s just that most of it exists between the dusty old covers of books. But every once in a while someone will say something that makes you pause. Something that sticks. Something that rolls around in the back of your brain for years like an everlasting gobstopper, revealing different flavours and colours. Looking back at my own life so far I now realise the best bits of advice I’ve received weren’t offered as advice at all. Rather they came in a more oblique and indirect ways. Usually as offhanded remarks or casual observations, little asides dropped in the context of the broader conversation.

Here are my favourite two:

1. “Any story is interesting if you just focus on it long enough.”

   This is something my Uncle Oker, a journalist and novelist once said at a dinner party at his house in Toronto when I was a teenager, back in the early 90s. He’s a journalist and novelist. I forget what the conversation was about apart from writing but that single observation has always stayed with me and proved true almost without exception.

2. “Love is not for selfish people.”

   This was a remark made casually to me over dinner in a military canteen at Camp Drvar, Bosnia by a French-Canadian Peacekeeping officer during a press tour I took in November, 2000. He was talking about his wife of 25-odd years, with whom he had four children, who lived back in Quebec City and how, in spite of a long succession of tours of duty, they’d somehow managed to keep the flame alive. He wasn’t being romantic but brutally honest. And man, is he correct.

Now your turn: What’s the best piece of advice you’re ever received — solicited or unsolicited — why and how so? I’m all ears.

Photo by Max Simonov on Unsplash