Useless Advice

I have always been more of an advice giver than an advice taker.

It's interesting that I rarely take advice from anyone. I always feel that what people tell me is either good information or bad. I decide almost immediately what I am going to do with that information; I'll either file it away in the mental drawer labeled, "Good Advice that I should take even if I already think I know it" or the other one (the big one) labeled, "Crap".

I am sure that I give out lots of Crap to many people who talk to me. I am not a good example to follow. I am completely and utterly financially unsuccessful. I have very few close friends. I have rarely participated in the most basic events of human life which tend to shape the average person's decision making processes. I have almost always rejected the obvious in favor of the absurd. I'm totally self-absorbed - just look at my use of the word "I" in this blog.

YET, I know that it is a very basic tenet of my personage, the EJ inside me all the time, that one should always consider every detail of their actions and how those actions will affect others.
I am not sure how these two facets of my personality coexist in any kind of harmony. Maybe they don't and that's why I so often find myself feeling low.

This belief that your actions, my actions - that they are directly linked to everyone else through even the slightest gesture - is something that seems so basic to me. Of course someone will know or be affected when I do something that is dishonest or cruel or wonderful and fantastic. I often feel I do things that are a total waste of time to the casual observer but to me these seemingly useless actions somehow make the world safer. Or not. Maybe they just make me feel better. My feeling better can affect how I treat others and then I pass on that positive sense to my neighbors. That's good, isn't it?

Unfortunately, I often feel badly, even if I've done something nice or harmless because I think I could have spent my time more 'wisely' - whatever that means.

I do and say a lot of awful things as well and I'm always sure that those words and deeds trickle through the air and make someone miserable somewhere - even if it's not my intended victim.

At moments when I, myself, feel sad, lonely, miserable, vulnerable, wronged by life - I want to take back all of the bad things I've ever said about anyone and undo all of the evil I've done, no matter how tiny and forgettable it might seem. Life is too short to be painful, even if the pain does make it more memorable.

I don't know. Maybe pain, misery, suffering - maybe these are necessary evils; kind of like Hilary Clinton and George Bush or Osama bin Laden and Kim Jung Il. They seem so inessential but the world would be really different without them and not necessarily better.

Wait - I'm being political! That's not really me.
At least I'm offending both major political parties on equal levels.

I often wish I were a different person: someone who is cool, financially secure, worldly, sophisticated, has smartitude, likes chickens...but then I realize that to have all those things I would have to be mostly clueless about the rest of the world - the world outside my immediate experience.