Advice – Getting On

Being a letter from old-age me to the bright young thing I never was…

Dear Colin,

You have reached a fair age, so don’t worry about that strange lump just for now: it is almost certainly a boil. It will, like an optimistic bubble, burst when you least expect it. As I sit here composing this letter to you, I am surrounded by relics from my past – your present – and I am filled with… despair. Pull yourself together for goodness sake!

I am not going to bother you with too much in the way of advice: I remember what you were like – you won’t listen. Instead I will just try to give you a head’s up to some of the lessons I have learned in my life so far. In the 23,500 days I have spent on Earth I have discovered much. Some of it I have remembered…

Over the years you will have times that are not filled with self-doubt, but they will be few and far between. Enjoy them for what they are: an illusion.

It is perhaps best that it does not become a habit, but there are times when you should put yourself ahead of others. Learn to fight back sometimes – it seldom makes things worse. There are times to fight and times to run; times to state your opinion and times to hold your own counsel; times to interfere and times to hold back: don’t worry about it – you will never get it right.

Remember that silences do not have to be filled.

As you get older, it is increasingly important that you remain positive. Nobody likes a depressed codger.

Don’t worry about your looks. Your nose might feel big today, but by the time you reach sixty it will be completely dwarfed by your ears. You are not completely ugly – quite a bit, but not completely – girls will like you for who you are. Eventually they may have sex with you. This is how they handle pity.

The world got along perfectly well before you came along; it will get along perfectly well after you have gone. Relax. You are worth nothing. Once you reconcile yourself to this fact ironing your shirts will become far less important.

Don’t allow your world to be ruled by envy for those who are more successful than you: there are far too many of them. Everybody appreciates modesty. It is far easier to be modest when you have nothing to boast about.

By the time you reach my age the world will have changed beyond all recognition. It will be filled with things of which you could never dream and for which you will never find a use. This is called progress. As you get older you will realise that progress is just a fallacy: the problems persist, it is just the uniforms that change.

You will never stop hating New Year’s Eve.

You will never stop hating Okra.

Although the world may be filled with people you dislike, your life will be filled with people you love and when you reach my age you will realise that it’s all that really matters. That and chocolate.

One day you will be me and you will find yourself sitting down to write a letter to your own younger self. If, in the meantime, you actually ever receive this letter, then you will know that time travel really is possible and that there is never any real point in paying for whisky that is anything over twelve years old. It’s not my fault; talk to Einstein.

For now (and then) anyway, cheers!

From me (and you)

…Soon we will be older
When we gonna make it work?…

Now, I have read the guidance. I understand that publishing a blog which offers advice (or, more precisely, has a title that suggests that it offers advice) is a sure-fire way to score extra readers. Why this should be I have no idea, particularly as it is my experience that, by and large, most people are very bad at taking advice – no matter how well-meaning and informed it is. On the whole, sound advice is, I find, rather resented and so, I rarely attempt to give it. However, I feel it is probably time to give it a go. This blog is, after all, about getting older and, as I am doing precisely that, I feel certain that I can offer some insight. Of some kind. Somehow…

I have now spent a few hours with some scraps of paper. I have made notes. They are not in any order, just as they occurred. I don’t think I’m going to change your world, but, for what it’s worth, here it is:
• Take your time: do things at your own pace. You may well be able to do exactly what you did thirty years ago, but it will now take you weeks to recover. If it involves anything that features bending, you will be racked by pain and locked rigid for the foreseeable future.
• If you find that you have become addicted to a hobby such as train spotting or stamp collecting, pretend that you are actually doing something more socially acceptable: taunting next door’s pet rabbit with an electrical carrot; howling like a wolf at the checkout in Marks & Spencer; carrying fish heads in your pocket through the whole of August.
• Do not obsess about your weight – it will only make you comfort eat.
• Never give your opinion. It will only lead to accusations and recriminations. Whatever they may say, people do not want to hear your opinions, they want to hear affirmation of their own.
• Never eat a ripe peach in public.
• Never make plans – you will have quite enough problems fitting in with everybody else’s.
• Sunglasses do not make you look cool – they make you walk into things.
• Do not complain that jam jar lids are getting tighter – they are not.
• Never be tempted into telling anyone how good you used to be at any sporting endeavour. Even if you won an England Cap, they will have been ‘much easier to come by’ then.
• Never be foolish in the proximity of your grown-up children. They will never forget it and, therefore, neither will you.
• You might feel like a woman half your age, but that is because you are a man of sixty. Stop it!
• Your children’s friends do not like you. They merely tolerate you.
• There comes a point when looking helpless stops attracting ridicule and starts to elicit sympathy. Milk it while you can.
• Nobody ever really thinks that you look young for your age. They are just being nice, because you are old.
• Enjoy everything you do as if it is the last time you will do it – because, frankly, it just might be.
• If you want to wear a hat, then wear a hat. Looking a pillock is a privilege of age.

We can do anything that we want.
Anything that we feel like doing…
Advice for the Young at Heart – Tears For Fears (Holland/Orzabal)

Tag: Advice

Dear Me

Advice for the Young at Heart…