I was slow on the uptake with Cheryl Strayed. My friend recommended her writing to me years ago but it wasn’t until much more recently that I started following her work. Her most famous book is her memoir, Wild – you might have seen the movie version starring Reese Witherspoon. But my favourite is a book called Tiny Beautiful Things. It’s a compilation of online advice columns she wrote over the years.
The subtitle of Tiny Beautiful Things is ‘Advice on love and life from someone who’s been there.’ That last bit – from someone who’s been there – is the most important part. That’s the genius of everything Cheryl Strayed does. She talks about what she knows. And she doesn’t pretend to know more than she does.
I think we all do best when we stick to offering advice about things we’ve had direct experience of. If you haven’t been there then it’s best to defer to someone who has. If you haven’t been there then maybe you don’t have any business telling us what it’s like.
You can get lots of knowledge by reading and studying but you can’t get the lived experience that makes the advice worthwhile. This is the opposite of what the world teaches us. We’re taught to study, qualify and be the expert with all the answers. But unless you’re talking about something purely technical I would argue that perhaps you shouldn’t be giving advice about things you only know from the outside in. You can offer questions. You can be curious. You can help someone illicit their own advice for themselves. But you can’t assume to know what it’s like to be in their position.
It’s tempting to think we can imagine experiences and so can offer firm opinions and advice about what one should or shouldn’t do in those scenarios. But it doesn’t work like that. You can’t know what it’s like or what you would do until you’re faced with the circumstance yourself.
When you soften into that reality your opinions on all kinds of things become less polarised and more open to change. And the big plus side to all of this is you don’t have to pretend to have any answers you don’t. You don’t ever have to offer an opinion you’re not sure of and pretend you’re certain about it. You get to ask questions. You get to enquire into the experience of those who have been there. You get to talk about the embodied knowledge and wisdom you’ve gained through your own experience of work and life.
When you no longer feel the need to pretend to know more than you do, everything changes.
