Big Ed's Place

I don’t write teen coming of age stories. This is partially because I remember my teen years pretty well and don’t particularly want to relive them. For me, they were a mixture of fear, dread, overconfidence, unreasonable hope, and way way too much soap operatic drama. In fact, when I see a lot of popular entertainment, from soap operas to reality TV, I wonder if perhaps too many people never really got out of their teen years except in biological age. I don’t particularly find the egotistical gyrations over petty stuff and popularity to be particularly entertaining and so have little desire to be the creator of such work.

That said, another reason I don’t write teen coming of age stories is that the temptation to be preachy would be very very hard to resist. I find I’ve got way too many ‘lessons learned’ that would have been useful back then, assuming I was actually willing to listen. The latter (listening) is unfortunately a trick, as a current relative demonstrates to me regularly. He’s 19 and he’s confident as hell and has repeatedly brushed off advice from us old fogeys twice his age. I roll my eyes, confident that he’ll learn, probably the hard way. If I bite my tongue hard enough we can have a pleasant time together without me being preachy.

Nonetheless, some of the advice I’ve long thought about snuck out in a twitter hashtag and I had a request from Dan Lyke to post it someplace more durable. So… climbing up on my soapbox:

• You are not immortal.  But you’ll accomplish a lot more if you forget that fact in most circumstances.
• You will regret the things that you did not do far more than the things you did.
• It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.  And if you do it when you’re older, you can buy cooler toys.
• The phrase “I might be wrong” is one of the most powerful you can ever say.
• Know the difference between being right and being wise.
• If you’re going to do something illegal or immoral, make it deliberate. Don’t slide into it.
• There is more power in listening well than in any other social skill.
• Don’t attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity.  It simplifies your enemies list.
• Everyone has a price, though it’s rarely measured in money. Knowing your own price makes you stronger.
• The least-drunk person in the room calls the shots. Consider whether you want to be drunk or in charge.

That’s ten things, which is probably a good place for me to step off the soapbox. Maybe they’ll be useful. Or at least entertaining.

Tags: my history, philosophy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 5:40 am and is filed under General Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.