Good Advice

And by good advice I don't mean something I've heard from someone else. I've always been free with my advice for others. I recognized when I was in college (or maybe some time shortly thereafter) that it is always easier to see someone else's life clearly and to know what they should do. It is so hard to see our own lives that clearly. I think that's why we have friends, so they can tell us the things we need to do. Does all that make sense?

So, I have a friend who is dear and sweet and is prone to jump into situations feet first without really thinking of all the ramifications. Delly is the woman who offered to give free massages to a random stranger (male) that she met at the grocery store. I'm the one who said, "NO, you are not inviting him into your home." And it turned out that he was a little creepy and wanted "special" massages. She is also the one who told me about meeting some guy on the internet and things progressing to phone calls and how she figured the next step was for him to send her a plane ticket to visit him in Texas. And I said, "HELL NO!! If he wants to see you he can get his butt up here but you do not go somewhere where you don't know anyone and you are vulnerable." She decided there just wasn't any chemistry there anyway.

What to say when she announced that she is engaged to her ex-partner (of 15 or more years) who she finally got completely out of her life a month ago? They were super co-dependant and have been broken up for more than a year. Suddenly, "He's changed, he has a real relationship with God, he has a job." His job is day-trading on the internet. I consider that a quick path to not having any money. I'm sure my face betrayed most of my thoughts but all I said was, "I just want you to be happy." And I got grief from another friend for not being supportive enough. So when she called me last night to say that they were thinking of getting married in a hurry before he had to fly to Hawaii because he was worried about the plane crashing or something I was a little stunned and didn't know what to say.

I woke up in the middle of the night just knowing that it was a super bad idea and trying to figure whether or what to say to her. Luckily by the time I called her that idea had been thrown out. Luckily also that she values my honesty and isn't offended easily.

But this whole story leads me to the question: How do you know when you should and shouldn't say something to someone? I've led my life thus far mostly just popping off. I'll admit that I'm kind of a loud mouth and my secret dream is to have my own advice column or, better yet, a talk show called "Common Sense According to Heaven." But maybe I need to be more circumspect instead just being the negative doomsayer that I feel like lately. After all, no one liked Cassandra much. Granted she was telling the future (if I remember the story right) and I'm just telling people my views but I think there are some similarities. I haven't reached any conclusions yet other than I probably need to keep my mouth shut more often.