The sad thing about advice is we are never really ready to hear it when it’s first given to us.

And while we’ve all heard that tired old axiom that it’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes rather than your own, we don’t really believe it. We need to make the mistakes.

We need to be in the crud.
The chaos.
The uncertainty that can only be brought by the experience of life, which is wholly neutral, but we interpret as good or bad.

We need to hit that crossroads where all that’s left was that bit of advice we once heard, and had we only taken it then, we may not have been caught up in our current predicament. But it didn’t make sense then.

It makes sense now.

To lament the loss of time wasted to get to this serendipitous moment of clarity is to cast judgement on it, which isn’t useful.

The only thing that matters is the recognition and, most importantly, the action thereafter.

Then again, almost all advice can be cast aside because we are never ready to hear it… or it all just might be useless.