Advice

X: How can you work it up, your world-despair? How do you come to it? Does it hit you first thing in the morning? Do you, like, wake up to it? Are you full of world-despair as you crawl out of bed? What about natural joys? Birds singing … Looking forward to a hearty breakfast … Or does it encroach upon you during the day? Is it the result of some process of reasoning? Do you argue yourself into it? Is it, like, a conclusion? Do you think it could be just a bad attitude? Do you think you need some therapy, or something?

I mean, look at you. You’re pasty. You need a bit of fresh air and exercise. Have you ever tried exercise? Go to the gym. Do some 5K runs. Take cold showers.

Have you guys ever thought of drinking less? Do you think that might be an idea?

Just … get a better mindset. Let’s google it. How to change your frame of mind. Let’s look it up …

Y: So moderate! So reasonable! So many good ideas! So commonsensical! So sensible!

If only we’d found you earlier. If only we’d listened to you all along. If only we’d had you to guide us. To save us from ourselves. Because that’s what we need, isn’t it: saving from ourselves. From our own excesses.

We get it wrong! We go off course! We need a corrective! We need a guiding star! A guiding light! A cox, bellowing orders through a megaphone! A personal trainer! A life coach – why not? You should advertise your services. More generally, I mean. As a service to humanity …

Why didn’t we think of those things ourselves? These … life hacks. Brilliant! Nothing better! All along, it was just a question of … bucking up. Fucking genius. What would we be without you?

X: You guys are incorrigible.

Incorrigible! That’s just it! that’s just the word! Perfect! We’re incorrigible. Get out the thesaurus. We’re recalcitrant! Stubborn! Defiantly so! We’re pig-headed! Obstinate! And we even take pride in what we are! In our degradation! In the whole andmoreagain! It’s not going to get any better, is it?

We really do need saving from ourselves. And you’re just the person to save us. Imagine – our very own motivational speaker! Our own private well being cheerleader! We ought to fall our fucking knees! In gratitude!

X: Now you’re doing it again. Like, attack the organisational manager. It’s open season on business studies. I was only trying to help.

Y: Sure you were! Only trying to help! You meant well! You mean well! You want the best for us! We appreciate it! It’s good to have someone looking out for us! On our side! Wanting to bring out our best selves! Allowing us to put our best feet forward! Willing to meet us where we are and then bring us along.

And we appreciate your tact. Your gentleness. The way you’ve gone about it. Ah, we need help – we’re the first to admit it. We need guidance. A pilot light. Our ship needs righting. Left to ourselves, what would we become? If we followed our worst tendencies … If we gave them head … Let them dominate us …

No, we don’t take this for granted. It isn’t easy giving out advice. It isn’t always appreciated. We know that. We can imagine we’re rather a fearsome crowd.

But we’re willing to learn! We’re all ears! We’re eager to improve. To do better! We don’t take this for granted! We’re willing to learn! We even want to learn! To improve ourselves! To do better! Why not?

There are some essential life skills that we’re missing – no doubt! There are some useful life hacks we could learn – of course! We need to be open to things – we realise that. Maybe we’re not stubborn. We’re not stick in the muds. We don’t want to remain where we are. We want to change. We’re willing to entertain … new ideas. New ways of doing things.

We don’t want to go on as we are: that’s clear, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be unbearable: to just go on as we are? We’re more than this: we’ve always known that. We’re better than this. This isn’t just who we are.

Where would we be headed, without you? Nowhere good! On the downward spiral! Into the abyss – further into the abyss! Left to ourselves, we’d only be ruined by ourselves. Destroyed by ourselves.

Our instincts are wrong. Our instincts … where would they take us? Nowhere good. Downwards. Spiralling. In some death-spiral.

We need … lifting up. We need our aspirations raised. Our flight-plans course corrected. We need a negativity audit. We need a course correct. We need to set our sights higher.

We need to someone to tell us off, essentially. Show us where we’re going wrong – no, before that: that we’re going wrong. A loud, No! A certain, Stop! That would bring us up short. Make us ashamed. Stop us in our tracks. Call a halt to our march. Head things off. Stop things going too far … although they’re already too far. Before they go any further.

Because we know we’ve done wrong. We know we’ve gone a little too far. We know we should have done more to curb our excesses … That we should have stopped ourselves from going too far … But we have no internal brake. Our judgement is flawed. We lack common sense. The appropriate instincts. To reign ourselves in. To hold ourselves back …