FREE ADVICE IS A BARGAIN
AT TWICE THE PRICE
Journal of Healing – June 23, 2004

By Mary Koch

Every once in a while somebody asks me for advice. I try not to get too puffed up about it.

"The worst [wo]men often give the best advice," noted the English poet Philip Bailey.

There’s a lot of advice – good and bad – floating around out there, and through the ages there’s been plenty of advice about advice.

"We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain," said W. R. Alger, a 19th century clergyman.

"Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice," sneered the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, who was a 17th century moralist – in a not especially moral era.

"When a man seeks your advice, he generally wants your praise," warned the 18th century Earl of Chesterfield.

Most of the people who seek my advice are looking not for praise but a magic pill. They’re desperate. They have found me through the Internet because they have a friend or family member who has been diagnosed with "Locked-In Syndrome," the diagnosis applied to my husband following his stroke 10 years ago.

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BY THE TIME advice-seekers find me, they have searched diligently. If you type "Locked-In Syndrome" into the Google search engine, my web site turns up about 105th. The No. 1 Google search result – and it unfortunately has been No. 1 for years – is the National Institutes of Health page that says the prognosis for Locked-In patients is poor. The NIH offers little or no help, much less advice.

At the 103 web sites between the NIH and me are a few upbeat people with encouraging things to say – but no one is offering a magic pill. That, I suspect, is why people keep clicking their mouse, moving on, hoping that deep within Google's engine lies the solution.

They don't get any solutions from me, but I do pass on some of the best advice I've been given. In doing that I've come up with my own advice about advice: Keep it short. Three or four words should just about do it.

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SHORT ADVICE is easier to remember. It is also recyclable. You can use it for many occasions; it will solve all sorts of problems. Here's some of the best advice I've received.

1. "Anything is possible." That’s how John’s first physiatrist (a doctor who specializes in rehabilitation) answered one of my questions 10 years ago. Her words have made all the difference. Note, she didn’t say EVERY thing is possible, just anything. And when you leave the door open to any possibility, just about anything will happen.

2. "Live in the present." We’ve all heard this before. Plenty of people have continually reminded me of it over the years. "Easy to understand; difficult to apply," one friend said. Remembering to live in the present can save you from having to worry about and solve problems you don't and may never have.

3. "Do your best." This welcome bit of advice comes from a little book called, "The Four Agreements." It’s especially important for someone like me, a recovering perfectionist. Because my husband faces so many challenges, I want to do everything perfectly as John's caregiver. I wasted a lot of years and tears striving for perfection. Now I just do my best, and the funny thing is – it's been good enough.