‘Advice to sabhi dete hain, the point is who you take it from,’ goes an old TV advertisement featuring the legendary Rahul Dravid. The trouble with advice is that it is generally very biased. People are bound by their own belief system that prevents them from looking beyond their short-sighted horizon. And how are beliefs shaped? Through the experiences we have. Imagine the frustrated fox advising people not to eat grapes, because they are all sour!
Abraham Maslow, a renowned psychologist aptly said that if a hammer is the only tool we have, then all problems appear like a nail. For instance, becoming an Amway distributor can become a solution for unemployment, even though Network Marketing is not everyone’s cup of tea. The most out-of-place advice I have heard is one given to a Mechanical Engineer who had been unemployed for some time. He was suggested to start training as a Commercial Pilot. No prizes for guessing the profession of the adviser!
During childhood days, advice generally comprises of parents and teachers sermonizing kids. As one grows up, it does feel awkward to get one from people with whom your relationship is fuzzy at best. It actually becomes a matter of ego to ‘convey a message’ to ‘someone in need’. This world is not made of absolutes. One person’s right doesn’t make another’s ‘right’ wrong. While some advice can make a person introspect on his own shortcomings, too much of it can lead to mental and emotional conflict, especially because the advice given by different people is of contradictory nature. It is the ‘serial advisers’ who actually need some themselves!
The chilling part is that not all advice comes verbally, through friends, acquaintances, and family. The need of seeking solutions from external sources has given rise to the multi-billion dollar self-help industry which churns out volumes of advice to clueless and gullible people, a lot of which are biased, dangerous, or even downright illegal. We all have heard of self-styled self-help coaches deriding formal education, and others dishing out some magic formula to make you an overnight millionaire. The only people who actually become a millionaire are they themselves.
To conclude, the solution offered ends up doing more harm than the original problem itself. As written by the great poet/lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi, ‘Na to kaarva ki talaash hai, na to hamsafar ki talaash hai, mere shauq-e-khana kharaab ko, teri rahguzar ki talaash hai. Mere namurad junoon ka hai ilaaj koi to maut hai, jo dava ke nam pe zehar de usi charagar ki talaash hai.’
