The Best Advice Is Never To Take Advice

I felt like that dog that walked for five years to get back home.

I just sat down to try to make some sense of the last month and just then I get a call from a collection agency about a bill that Optum Medical put in their hands to take care of. I say medical bill, but co-pay would probably describe the issue better. 

$33.

Optum Medical sent a bill to collections and I was stopped from doing something besides working, sleeping, preparing my lunch or dinner, showering and driving to make good on this profane debt that seems to have Optum Medical in a real jam. I mean, how are they supposed to keep the doors open when they have money like that out on the street?

You see, it is all the working, sleeping, preparing my lunch or dinner, showering, and driving that make it so difficult for me to get anything done for myself. When I subtract all of those necessary duties, I am probably left with a grand total of about one hour and forty-five minutes a day for myself. So, if I get annoyed at Eileen from Fistula Debt Collections, it’s only because I have to spend 90% of my life making money, which in itself is degrading enough, but then there are these annoyances in the periphery that want to access the small time I do have to take another little piece of the income I am earning from trading all of this time.  

I began to give Eileen my card number and she interrupted me to ask if it was Mastercard or Visa. I say Mastercard. Then she asks debit or credit. I say credit. Then Eileen tells me to hold on while she transfers me. I told her to get bent and I hung up. If you think you’re going to take my money and my time, you need to see a neurologist. 

It ain’t happening. 

Either find a more efficient method for fleecing the general public or go into a more humane business—like factory farming or casket sales. I know how much these medical facilities inflate their charges because I just received a statement of benefits from Delta Dental and the $2200 worth of dental work that Aspen Dental quoted turned into $1200 once Delta got involved. 

I imagine it’s a lot like the used car business where the dealership “charges itself” retail to repair the cars it sells and the poor salesman (myself, on too many occasions) who expects an $800 commission gets $250 instead. This is why so many people are beginning to wake up to the idea that class war is the only legitimate war in this country. 

If it seems like I’m being negative, I’m not. I’m actually coming off one of the most powerful weeks of my life. The week of Julie. It was everything that falling in love is supposed to be. It’s two people who literally cry tears of joy looking into each other’s eyes. It doesn’t really get more intense than that. I felt like that dog that walked for five years to get back home. Except in my case, it was more like forty years. 

The most important thing I learned actually took place after the fact. That is, keep your joy, your excitement and your plans to yourself. There are certain magical moments and circumstances that we will run into in our lives that were never meant to be shared with others. 

This was one. 

It can be especially galling when men who are not in relationships begin to parcel out advice without being asked for it–which is sort of like asking a homeless person for financial advice. Or is that unhoused person? Whatever the politically correct way of putting that is, it’s annoying. I wouldn’t take advice from Alain de Botton, Esther Perel or, even, Michaela Boehm–and they’re relationship experts. I’m certainly not going to listen to an incel about how to manage my romantic life.

It was right after one of these exact incidents that it dawned on me how futile it is to take any advice from people. I was having this exact thought when I went on break last night at work. And wouldn’t you know it, my Facebook algorithms did not disappoint. After a series of funny Bill Burr, Louis C.K. and Mitch Hedberg reels came this interview with a woman I did not recognize, nor have the time or inclination to find out her name. I regarded it as the “universe” speaking to me.

She said, “Don’t waste your life trying to make the right choice. You’re better off making the choice right.” In practical terms, she was saying that every situation is so unique, it’s nearly impossible to utilize boiler plate rules for decision making. You could decide to attend Harvard and be a nobody and you could go to a community college and become world famous. That’s not really the point. The point is, once you have made your decision, do everything in your power to justify that decision.

If you’re going to open a restaurant, give it your all. If you decide to get married, make it a beautiful marriage. Statistically, marriages and businesses fail half the time. I imagine this includes a sampling of both well thought out plans and spontaneous ones. It’s really a person’s effort that determines how either idea turns out. 

I believe the woman being interviewed was trying to say just that. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that her advice–the advice to never take advice–was the best advice I ever heard. I’m sure if you inventory every wonderful accomplishment or moment in your life, you’ll recognize that it did not happen as a result of taking advice. (I can’t tell you how many people tried to tell me I’d never get a book deal without having connections in the publishing world.)

The more I think about it, the more I realize this might actually be the third time I wrote about the uselessness of unsolicited advice, but if there ever was advice that was needed to be repeated, this was it. 

So, for everyone in the back of the room, take my advice: don’t listen to advice.