Unsolicited Advice

Artwork by Abbey Humphris

When I turned forty, I thought that I had gained some peculiar wisdom, especially through so many diverse experiences I’d acquired during my twenties while adapting to a new culture in Australia.

I started creating my own particular rules of life, which I insisted on communicating to my children at every opportunity. I also had my children memorise the rules and I tested them to see if they remembered, as they always came up no matter what we were talking about.

“If you don’t ask, you don’t get,” says my teenage son while trying to extend his gaming time online at bedtime. That’s the moment you realise that, in fact, your children are an improved version of yourself.

“Be resourceful and work with what you have now,” he continued. A proud feeling of love and awe surrounds me when I realise they are more ingenious than I am.

Now I’m about to turn fifty, and the rule-making machine it’s getting worse. I tend to give unsolicited advice to anyone who talks to me. What am I to do? I cannot avoid it — it just comes to me like some sort of divine power.

I’ve noticed recently there are two types of people in this world: those set in their own ways, unwilling to accept a different perspective; and my kind of people: open minded. But sometimes I’m not sure which group I belong to.

Contemplating all of this at the beach, I breathe in the salty smell of the sea wind and feel a sudden expansiveness of the universe, blue nature in front of me leaving me boundless.

How can we belong, how can we all belong, a myriad of spheres coming together? I carry all this on my shoulders when I go into the sea. What joy, now that my worries have vanished.

All the tourists have gone. It’s a treasure to behold. You cannot buy this feeling with all the money in the world.