#KISS - Unsolicited advice

Giving advice is not easy. You have to be well prepared, and you have to find the right moment. There is no perfect counsellor on this earth. That alone puts us in a difficult position to give advice, and the difficulty increases when we have not been asked for the advice to be given. Those were the first thoughts that came to my mind hours ago when I saw this week's prompt. After sorting out my thoughts, here is an answer.

First of all, anyone going through the difficulty of letting go of something physical or emotional can count on my understanding. I have been there, and in fact, I still struggle to keep letting go. Sometimes it is extremely difficult. It feels like we are cutting off some of our limbs. How can that be possible? This is the first thing I would take into account in my advice: it may be that what you are suggesting is difficult.

Another factor I would take into account is: it may take time to carry out the advice. On some occasions, I have needed time to understand the reasons, or to see the benefits, or to gain the humility and courage to carry it out, even though I did not get either of those things first.

And the last factor to take into account would be: I must respect the other person's feelings. Maybe I am not seeing all the elements that are involved in that situation, nor the importance that the person has taken on for what he or she is having trouble letting go of. And even if I have been in a similar situation myself, our different backgrounds and principles mean that we take on a similar situation in a very different way.

For all these reasons, I come to the conclusion that I would be very careful with the words I use to give advice. And perhaps it sounds similar to what I am about to write, where even after thinking about the matter, perhaps I can do even better.

To move forward we need to take off any unnecessary weight. And to exemplify this I would use a bird. Birds were designed to fly and often seem to do so effortlessly, by gliding, or using air currents, among other factors. It's hard to imagine a bird trying to fly holding a 5kg bag of flowers, or a 5kg bag of rocks. Could it be the same? How far could it fly like that? It would be very difficult. To take advantage of its entire capacity and design it has to avoid that kind of weight.

In the same way, there are things that we need to let go of, whether they are good or bad, whether they are things that seem to make us happy or things that seem to harm us. If they weigh us down... How difficult. And when it's material things it's usually because an emotional value was attached to it. It's because of who gave it to you, or who it belonged to before, or how you got it. So, if what I'm suggesting to that person is about something like that, I have to remember the factors I mentioned at the beginning: it might be difficult, it might take time, and I have to respect that.

And that idea might be related to this second part of the advice: let the water run. Our life is unlikely to have the same rhythm all the time. Sometimes we will go at a slow pace, sometimes it will be a bit more hectic and faster. The power of water is one of the most respectable. Because of that in some stretches it is not good to fish, to cross the water, or to build a structure.

Similarly, there are some things that should be left to run. Maybe we have to wait for the right moment, but it will surely come. Then we can follow the course we have charted, overcoming the turbulence.

Wow, just writing down the possibility of giving advice already makes me a bit nervous. It is inevitable to think how right it is, and whether we are doing the person harm or good. A lot will have to do with love, sincere interest and the eternal principles on which that advice is based. We will all need it at some time.

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