Unsolicited Advice

While serving in my first area on my LDS mission, I experienced some adversity with my companions and an area where the work was extremely slow. Feeling a need for some encouragement, I wrote some letters to friends back home. One friend wrote back, but it was not the kind of letter I was hoping for. My friend wrote that she wanted to be helpful but that she felt she had to be honest -- clearly, she also felt that I needed to understand a few things. I had wanted some kind words, instead I received some unsolicited advice.

It can be easy to find fault and weakness in others, and when they ask for our help, it may seem like a good idea to inform them of our findings. There may be cases where this is appropriate, especially if the individual asks for complete, brutal honesty, but in most cases we may do more harm than good, despite our best intentions. We may do well to remember the words of the hymn:

Should you feel inclined to censure
Faults you may in others view,
Ask your own heart, ere you venture,
If you have not failings, too.
Let not friendly vows be broken;
Rather strive a friend to gain.
Many words in anger spoken
Find their passage home again.

My intent here is not to criticize my friend; maybe she did not need to write some of the things that she did, but I did not have to internalize them in the way that I did.

I felt, at the time, that her letter was the slap upside the head that I needed, and over the next few years, any time I felt I needed another head slap, I would pull out that letter. That was my mistake, and it served to magnify some of the feelings I had in high school about my friends. They were cool, they were special, and I was anything but those things. I was quiet, plain, even socially inept -- so I thought -- and I had other weaknesses.

When I was young I felt that I did not fit in anywhere. At school I was the kid everyone, it seemed, made fun off, and this spilled over to the neighborhood I lived in and to the ward I attended. Additionally, I felt at times that I did not fit in my own family because I seemed to be so different from my three brothers. To this day I much prefer to interact with women instead of men; I was never one of the guys, and never knew how to be.

I made a lot of friends in high school, but most of them lived in other parts of town -- a large gully literally separated my part of town from theirs -- and had gone to different elementary and junior high schools. At first I was happy to bask in the light of my new friends, but eventually it seemed that my quiet nature was keeping me separate from them. I wondered how I fit in, or if I did at all. Even today there are times when I feel that I do not fit in anywhere.

I am still quiet and still an introvert. I value my alone time; I can spend hours just reading a book, or walking around taking photographs. But there are times when I desperately want to be around other people, and there just isn't anyone to be around. Still other times I am with people and I just can't think of anything to say; it gets awkward and I start thinking that I am better off just being alone. It's a vicious circle, and it leaves me feeling even more isolated and alone.

A song I have been listening to recently is about dealing with unsolicited advice:

You've got opinions, man
We're all entitled to 'em, but I never asked
So let me thank you for your time,
And try not to waste anymore of mine. . . .
I hate to break it to you babe, but I'm not drowning
There's no one here to save
Who cares if you disagree?
You are not me. . . .
Who died and made you king of anything?

But then there is this:

All my life I've tried to make everybody happy
While I just hurt and hide
Waiting for someone to tell me it's my turn to decide

I don't think that I have tried to make people happy, simply because I never thought I could. I was no one, an outcast, what could I do? Meanwhile, there have certainly been times that I have gone deep and run silent. Now I am beginning to realize that I have been waiting for someone to tell me that it is okay for me to just be myself.

I learned a lot on my mission -- it was a university of life -- and when I came home I wanted show my friends that I had changed. Instead, I found myself being unsure of how to act around my friends, afraid of being the same socially inept kid I perceived myself to be in high school. I was afraid to simply be myself because, whoever that was, had been so deeply flawed.

A few years ago, the friend who had written the letter with the unsolicited advice joined a social media website, and when I reached out, she blocked me. As hard as that was, it did serve one purpose in showing me that at least some of my friends were not quite as special as I thought they were. In realizing that, it allowed me to also discover that there had been something special about me. I finally took all my friends down from the pedestals I had placed them on.

Only then could I truly understand that God did not just give weaknesses to me, but to everyone. He gives us weaknesses that we might be humble, and if we humble ourselves before him and exercise faith in him, he will make weak things become strong, because his grace is sufficient. Yes, I had weaknesses -- I still do -- but so did my friends, and if, with their weaknesses, they could be special, then so could I.

Ironically, my friend's letter so long ago also contained some of the best advice I ever received, and this is a good place to remember it: Everyone has down times, everyone experiences feelings of inadequacy, but we are the master of our own soul. We have the power to choose how we feel, and we should choose to be confident instead of discouraged.

Finally, it is my turn to decide: I am not a nobody, I am a child of God. I may be quiet, but I have other talents and friends who appreciate them. I forgive my friend for her unsolicited advice, and for cutting me out of her life. Someday we may reconcile, but it does not need to be today. As noted, I have other friends.

Do not, then, in idle pleasure
Trifle with a brother’s fame;
Guard it as a valued treasure,
Sacred as your own good name.
Do not form opinions blindly;
Hastiness to trouble tends;
Those of whom we thought unkindly
Oft become our warmest friends.

Song lyrics: King of Anything, Sara Bareilles
Hymn: #235 Should You Feel Inclined to Censure