Some of the worst advice you can ever get in life often comes immediately after the expression, “Let me give you some advice.” Many of these pronouncements, frequently given with deep sincerity – you know, arm around the shoulder, looking straight at you – are often projected as highly distilled wisdom when the reality is that many of these apparent planks of guidance are simply bunkum.
The fact that books are written about these sayings, that people flock to lectures proclaiming them, that many prominent people parrot them, does not alter the fact: many of these frequently repeated aphoristic pearls are pure bunkum.
Take for example, the contention that “you can be anything you want in life – you just have to want it badly enough.” Has anything more silly ever been perpetrated on us? It’s parroted frequently in today’s media-oriented world and is a particular favourite with the Americans who never to seem to realize the absurdity of what they’re asserting. I guarantee you, somewhere on some television show some day in America this week, some new celebrity or some iconic figure being interviewed on television, will look into the camera, and cite their achievement as proof of the idea that “you can be anything you want – you just have to want it badly enough.” Next week, the same story, and onwards. Not only that: almost without fail, the statement will draw wild cheers from the audience and assenting nods from the host, when in fact, if you stop and think about it for two minutes, that mantra is absolute nonsense
You may wish for it as much as you want, dream about it night and day, put in all the hours of preparation and study, but you can’t be the world 100-metre champion unless God put you here with a body like Usain Bolt or Hasely Crawford. If you don’t have the vocal apparatus of an Andrea Bocelli or a Whitney Houston you can want to be a singer like that with every fibre of your being, you can stare at the moon dreaming about it, it’s obviously not going to happen. If your wish is to be a nuclear physicist, or, narrowing it further, even an accountant, you first of all have to be owning a brain that is superior at mathematics and simply wishing for one of those is not going to get you one. Those are attributes you have to be born with.
The tragic thing is that so many seemingly astute people apparently put their brains on the shelf and stand up and cheer when this hypocrisy is delivered. You can’t be a middle linebacker in the NFL, or a Test level fast bowler, or win the Tour de France, by deciding that’s the level you want to reach. Indeed, I would contend that much of the disillusion and despair that attaches to life in the highly developed countries comes from persons who have tackled life on the basis that “anything is possible if you want it” and have crashed facing the reality that it is not.
Another gem (I heard an Asian guru proclaiming it last week) is the sanctimonious plaudit that “we may be different races or groups in different countries but we’re all one people.” Pure bunkum. We may all look more or less similar physically, but the differences between the races are significant and unchanging. The cultural mores and attitudes between nations create actual, not virtual, chasms between us to the point where one group considers the other group’s positions to be dangerous, if not outright insane. The differences can lead to something as benign as a disinclination in some cultures to spicy food, or to something as severe as suicide bombing. We may be one body (there can even be some debate on that) but to describe us as being homogeneous in behaviour or culture, or even appearance, is beyond absurd.
Here’s another example: “Don’t feel inferior to any man; we all put on our pants one leg at a time.” I will give you that it has a nice ring, but if you take that as gospel, you are obviously fooling yourself. As much as he daubs too much outside the off stump, Sarwan is a better batsman than 99% of us. Former tennis star John McEnroe may have behaved like a jerk on the court, but in his prime he was simply superior to anyone with a tennis racquet in his hand. Some people are simply so much better at what they do than the rest of us, that the better advice would be to stay with what you’re good at. To suggest otherwise is myopic.
“Try and try again boys you’ll succeed at last.” We’ve all heard that one many times; it’s fallacious. There are countless examples – we all know them – of people who try and try again and never get what they’re after. I’ve lived for a lot of years in several countries, and in each of them I’ve known people, good people, dedicated people, who tried their level best, over and over, and ended up right where they started, but we still keep people advising to “try and try again.” The problem with this philosophy, as in the “you can be anything you want” one, is that desire is simply not enough; ability or innovation are critical factors in success and not all of us come with them.
In times of trauma, people love to tell you “Time heals all wounds.” Like some of these cliché advice bits, a key caveat in this one is omitted. In time the wound from traumas will certainly heal, but what the guy with his arm around your shoulder doesn’t tell you is that the sonofagun will continue to hurt. There are simply traumas in life that you will never get over; they will continue to pain you, often arising on their own, long after the incident has faded. The inference in the advice, that you’ll be okay again, is almost always just not true.
There are several more of these silly platitudes knocking about, but let me leave you with one more. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” That may be good advice if you’re a diesel engine or a coconut tree; if you’re a human being you know it’s nonsense. Words, in fact, can destroy a reputation, trigger violence, poison young minds, and cause enduring rifts between blood relatives. Words indeed, spoken or written, can be one of the most dangerous weapons known to man. Even in our little Guyanese sphere, one look at our daily newspapers will confirm that.
In a world when we’re always trumpeting intellectual honesty, it is time we confront some of these platitudes as the bunkum they truly are.
