Extistential Commentary on Advice

Advice is the sharing of past experience and its results. Even if the person giving the advice has no direct experience, the person searches through their similar past experiences to decide on what they would do in the situation. The urge to give advice is almost uncontrollable. But why are we so overcome to give advice? Advice is only understood through the mortality of the moment. Kierkegaard was puzzled with time in his journal; one could only live life moving forward and understand it by looking backwards. Trapped in this temporal paradox, we are never able to learn from our experiences to relive the moment. The mortality of the moment banishes the past, never to return. The only way we can relive the moment with the experience that we have learned from it, is vicariously through other’s future experiences. Giving advice allows one to rewrite their own regrets, this urge is almost uncontrollable. Additionally, as we pass through each stage of our life, the mortality of the moment dies, and accordingly who we were in the moment dies, as well. Sharing our experience allows us to pass on to the world what we have learned for the good of others and preventing our experiences from having been suffered in vanity. This is our last chance to rebel against our mortality, in a bid for immortality. Advice is our last chance to rebel against the cold purposeless of the forces of the universe; a universe without design and teleology. Through sharing human experiences we are able to establish a relation to each other, to help each other live lives of purpose.

Of course the challenge for the one who receives the advice is to sift through the others experiences to get what would be helpful in your own life.