All the Good Advice That a Woman Can Handle

A friend told me in what felt like a joking manner, "Tell me what to do," and I responded with something like, sure, no problem, let me think about it. Also joking. Like I know enough to tell anybody what to do. That was the punch line.

And so this other friend is having difficulties and she really does want me to tell her what to do. Not so she can do it, of course. But she wants me to hand her an option so she can turn it over and over in the light, catch its facets and nuance. I tell her I cannot, that she is in the land of the hard questions now, and that there is no easy road out of that place, no straight and narrow. I can only listen as she works it out herself.

And so another friend is having difficulties and she in no way wants me to tell her what to do. And I want so desperately to tell her what to do, because to me it seems so obvious, so kharmic, so very much "you reap what you sow." But she just wants me to listen, so I bite my tongue and listen, and to me it seems like she's just digging the hole deeper. But I listen, and I hope I do it with the right attitude, even if it's becoming hard to remember what the right attitude is.

And I remember all the times people tried to tell me what to do. They had my best interest at heart. And they still do, as they watch me fumble and rail and make big unsupportable announcements about "the way things are." I know I do this, and I hate it , because I hate being wrong. I like being right. I am getting used to having been wrong, looking back and saying, oh jeez what was I thinking? But I still hate being in the moment of being wrong.

I think that's the way it works, however. It's the choosing and not the choice that really matters. Consequences are unpredictable anyway. Life is not an equation. You are not responsible for the consequences, only the choosing.

I do not know if I believe this.

Anyway, I am muddled today. But I was pondering telling people what to do, and I found this, from a book I'm re-reading now, called The Ironic Christian's Companion by Patrick Henry:

"People in despair turn to others in hopes of finding the answer, despite their own impenetrable conviction that there is no answer. The trouble is, in a sense they are right. No one else has an answer to impose on them. Truth that comes from outside bears all too easily the aspect of rebuke. The answer that is promise, and not threat, is locked away inside me, and it is an unexpected answer - the only kind, after all, that can do an end run around an unanswerable question . . . . To wait with patience [for this answer] is not to sit back and do nothing; quite the contrary. Indeed, Paul uses the image of labor pains, the very opposite of sitting back and doing nothing, to illustrate the activity and striving that go with the patient practice of hope" (131).

Can labor feel like a muddle? I'm not sure. I guess I'll find out.