Some time ago, zen8tao mentioned to me that he would like to leave each of his surrogate nephews (one of which is my son) with a sort of “advice from experience” guidebook to life. He seemed to think that a lot of it would be Kenny Rogers-ish (“Promise me, son, not to do the things I’ve done.”) It’s a great, generous, self-aware idea. And as I was reading Danny Bonaduce’s “Random Acts of Badness”, he was enlightening readers that real fistfights are not like the movies. In a real fistfight, he who throws the first punch usually wins, they’re sloppy, and they never impress the ladies. Now, I’ve never been in a fistfight, so I can’t really deliver similar advice. But it’s awfully good advice.

You see, it seems to me that, to give advice on a subject, one should be wiser (through experience or terrific intuition) than the advisee.

Now, I like to think of myself as guy with wide experiences. I like to think of myself as a pretty smart guy. But I think everyone reading this is *wiser* than me on some subjects. I think *I* am wiser than everyone I know for at least one subject/person. (That’s not proven true. There are two people I know for whom I haven’t yet found those subjects.)

So zen8tao’s idea sounds good. But I’d like to get advice, right now, from those who can advise me.

So here’s the deal:

1) If you’ve got wisdom to share with the general population, post it here, as a comment. (If you would rather it remain anonymous, e-mail me by clicking on that little envelope, above. I will post the advice under my name, and you’ll remain anonymous.)
2) If you’ve got wisdom to share with me, dbsmall, especially as relates to ways in which you know I, specifically, could be living my life better, etc…shoot me an e-mail (either by clicking on the envelope or by sending to my first name @ small.to)