Advice? What Advice?

There comes a point in time when I must acknowledge that I have outgrown the epoch of life where I knew answers to anything and everything and therefore could be considered somewhat adequately qualified to give advice to people. It used to not be this way. Among those of my age group, I tended to be the most well-read, the most knowledgeable, and tended to pride upon myself on my dispassionately rational break down of problems and providing simple and workable solutions. Many of my acquaintances (I refrain from using the word ``friend'' here) come to me seeking advice and help, and I was known to give some rather useful ones from time to time.

Then I grew up, and nothing seemed to be understandable.

It took me nearly a decade to work out just what was wrong. It wasn't that I had lost my touch in being well-read, knowledgeable and dispassionately rational in breaking down problems into simple solvable parts. It was that the people I had been working with have changed. And since they have changed, the types of problems and eligible solution space have morphed too. Back in the day, one was always confined by some framework or another, be it from the perspective of education or, well, there wasn't any other alternative, was there? But when applied to the real world, or at least, a much larger framework that is life, the eligible solution space becomes hamstrung by the ineptness and limitations of the people seeking the said advice. Some solutions are easy to implement, but they are illegitimate because they cannot be successfully implemented by the person involved.

Of course, that was what I kept telling myself each time I found that I could no longer advise people effectively. Then, while I was showering earlier today, I hit upon yet another plausible answer: I was the one living in fantasy land and therefore have no right nor the information to provide proper advice to anyone.

I used to think I lived a hard life. Bad skin, relatively low income family, having to seemingly fight for everything that I needed. Then I realised one thing---since I was deemed somewhat more intelligent than my peers, my life beyond that of primary school was basically gilded. Choices were made easy during that time period because the number of choices at that level of gildness were few; there was little trade-off to worry about. Many of the choices that needed to be made had obviously correct ones. Compared to people who had middling abilities and modest home incomes, I had way less things to actually weigh and choose from than they. Which meant that I couldn't exactly learn a lot from the decisions that I had to make. Which also meant that unless the person has lived a similarly gilded life, I had no right to give them any useful advice.

That was what I did over the last decade. I had to overcome my helpful nature to turn it more callous, to literally shut the hell up as much as I could unless spoken to directly by someone asking for advice or help. World's a big place, with many people. I'm no Pope nor US President, so I can't actually help them all. Moreover, why bother helping anyone when I'm not qualified enough to help it?