On Advice

Essay 56

A few years from now I’ll be middle aged, in my mind’s eye I see Millennial grandmothers power-walking to Yield in a field of brown grass. I long passed through the requisite crossroads where normal life and the strange one diverge, saw a large group going the other way, taking up work, marrying friends, waiting for the sale. A handful of us came along this way then, an unlikely ensemble of one-offs, the only thing that unites any two of us is that one-time, unregretted, choice.

I must admit I often seek advice, and I’m sought after for such things more often. Personal setbacks make my sharp tips soften, and when I win, no one has much counsel for me. When those who went the other way come to me, at first I’m unsure what they think I could say: I fled their towns after all, their schools, ranks, and gardens (though, it turns out, not all of their problems!), the honest response to any query would be a suggestion they flee. But one seeks to personalise these things, take into account who’s asking and why.

When those that I travelled with ask for my insight, I wonder, sitting in this circus, if they’re like me, would they even hear it? A life so jagged or beastly shaped, how could my one-flame take even near it, so many liars, so many outliers, curious votes and vows abound, where’s the homology, the one-size-fits-all-ogy on which for me to rely?

And so in my generation we’ve come to revisit that old fork in the road from time to time, we form a strange squarish circle of life advice together, whisper from ear to ear or shout loudly into the never, and laugh at how none of us knows.