"Follow what makes YOU happy / Do what YOU want to do / (Wait for it) - Follow YOUR heart"
So much like all life advice and my character, I pretty much shrugged it off, as when most people give me advice there is usually 3 different reactions from my mind.
a) Do the exact opposite, to either see what happens, or because you generally don't value the source of the opinion.
b) Write it down for the 10 year and growing quote book me and a friend have been building up as a joke, because generally advice is so cliche and outright obvious, you can finish the sentence after the 2nd word, and makes you cringe, thus we have always laughed heavily together about quotes.
c) Ignore it / shrug it off and get on with worrying and thinking with a realistic solution to the issue that was disturbing you enough to receive the advice in the first place.
The advice above is good, as all advice probably is, however it's very difficult to put into practice or even decipher in the first place.
For a start, it is a contradiction within itself.
Because for my character especially, and i've read now and again in my life that it's the same for most human beings, plus the point has enough quotes in itself
"To be happy, make other people happy"
Which I know is true, because we've all been there and felt it, it's gotta be the warmest feeling going, However, also throughout my life, I have learnt the hard way that making others happy is not so straightforward and doing what YOU want to do, is extremely difficult albeit impossible to balance around making others happy, especially if your ideas are not the mainstream, there are always people disagreeing, or standing in the way.
Yet as they say...
"You can't please everyone all the time"
So as we begin to see advice and quotes begin to become a potential mindfield, and in the workings of my brain, generally leave me more confused then I was on the issues in the first place, herewith is why ignoring is generally the safest option with advice and quotes.
So I think deeper into the point of "Doing what you want" in life, and consider other prominent quotes which may affect this scenario.
"You can't always get what you want / you can't always have it your way"
More recently, as times have tightened, moods have lowered, the public/politicians/and people become more and more complex in ways to climb ontop of thy neighbour to gain more means then the others.
And in the stories, sights, horrors, and injustices and instantaneous information travel via the current media revolution of internet, international television, we see more and more people turning to religion, or for those like myself who choose not to join any of the teams (religions) currently on offer, turning towards prominent advice and quotes for guidance.
And with the information superhighway and all our fancy instantaneous information gizmos we get to see and hear more quotes and advice then ever, which just leads to more confusion!
I do think the initial advice is a good piece of advice in theory, however in practice I do have a question and concern about it.
Does it breed a better or worse planet/society if everybody "Does what they want to do"
In thinking of that, I start to think of my faith in the goodness of people as a whole, because we can clearly see that following yourself with 7 billion people on the same planet with millions of different views, beliefs, cultures and experiences, makes things pretty difficult.
Thus me thinking this quote could be one of the main problems, and if less people actually did what they wanted to do and followed protocol more, maybe the world would be a happier place, maybe all the bad people and stories we hear, and world problems (for example the fact people are starving hungry whilst others wear 1.5 million pound wrist watches)
So maybe the best advice is "Be ruthless, take no prisoners"
Or as I prefer, in my ever strong dislike of confrontation or treading on others toes
"Do nothing"
And I lose faith in advice and quotes, taking me back to square one.
:-)
Glenn
