I have several piece of advice that I want to share that revolve around some personal experiences of mine. These have accumulated over the years; I want to write them out not because they seem pressing at the moment, but because I think they are true.

1. Keep your emotions to yourself. Don’t spill them in public unless it’s appropriate, like at a funeral, or during a rock concert. Whatever you do, don’t use your emotions as a club to beat on someone else. Spill out your thoughts, but leave your emotions at the door: you have them, I have them, but in this medium and most others where rational thought fares better than other communicative forms, your emotions need to stay with you and the people that share them with you. Emotional nudity is ugly.

2. Stop with the gossip. There’s a line in a Bright Eyes song that says, “the truth is that gossip is as good as gospel in this town,” and I wonder how often that rings true of us - especially as youths. How many times does the New Testament tell you to keep your hands in your own pockets? If it’s not your business, make it not your business. If someone doesn’t want to tell you something, don’t try to pry up the floorboards. If people have old skeletons, don’t unlock their closets. Don’t disguise your gossip with good intentions and pious words.

3. Be honest. There is a time to lie, and there is a time to tell the truth and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. If that road seems unclear to you, err on the side of honesty. You’re a sinner, other people are sinners: you want to lie and other people want to take offense. This is the natural way. But let me ask you this - are you in your natural way? No, you are not.

4. Put on a thick skin. Sensitivity is nice, but it’s also a frill. When you’re riding into battle, you don’t have frills, you have sharp edges and functional equipment. Whether you die wearing dinted armor or a tutu doesn’t make a whit of a difference. Don’t jump to be offended at every little thing. You’re not an emotionally vulnerable teenager - I hope - and you don’t need to be coddled in the gentle arms of others’ deceit. Which is, after all, what most false sensitivity is. It’s a mask. It’s not about the other person, it’s about you. It’s selfishness.

5. Abandon stupidity. People will respect you more for admitting that you’re wrong and seeing you back off a bad position than you clinging to your idiocy because you’re afraid of giving an inch and having a mile stolen behind your back. If it’s stupid, it’s stupid. If it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense. If it’s not coherent, it’s weighing you down and you need to get rid of it before it drowns you. And illogical stands will do that. They will drag you down into an ocean of ridiculous related fallacies.

6. Think with complexity. Don’t think from point A to point B. That sort of logic is rarely if ever correct. If the solution to a problem seems obvious, it’s probably wrong. Occam’s razor is a fine tool for analysing the results of your scientific theorem, but it’s a horrible tool for understanding humans, human motivations, and human interaction. People are a whole lot of more like electrons: they exist in probability; you can’t measure them without some change happening. People, communities, churches, groups, faiths, environments, causes - all these things are not simple systems, so why are you trying to force them into some sort of artificial linearity?

7. Shut up. As I will now.

Tags: opinions