Words of Advice for Young People

By Peter W. Vaughan (?2018)

If you are like me, often asked to write a profound or pithy quote as advice for young people I usually ponder some erudite line or two, and occasionally I’ll flip through some tome or other so I can feel like I’ve done the required research (read various chapters and books) scan lots of sage advice, but what is it that young people really want to hear about?

I remember once as a young medical student I completed a six-week elective in anesthesiology (I know, I’m putting you to sleep) with Dr. Roger Bell in Hamilton Ontario at The Henderson General Hospital. Dr. Bell was always cheerful, knowledgeable and a very good clinician. I remember one day he said to me after a particularly challenging intubation, “Don’t forget to ask me for an important tip before you leave.” Oh, I thought, what could that be?

For weeks I puzzled over what piece of wisdom, what pearl he would cast before me. I thought of various rare clinical anecdotes, and considered potential wise tidbit of life experience he might throw my way, perhaps something to keep me on the medical straight and narrow, as my career stretched out before me.

I thought maybe there was something about the anesthesiologist's role as a part of the surgical team; you know teamwork and all that. Or perhaps there was a valuable lesson around pain control, something that he’d gleamed over many years of study and work in the field that he wanted to impart to me.

For days and weeks as we worked in the operating room and clinics I would puzzle over what advice he might be saving for me. So on the very last day of my elective I mustered all of my courage and asked, “Dr. Bell remember you said to ask you for some advice before I finished my elective, well this is my last day.”

Dr. Bell who often read the newspaper once the patient was put to sleep in the OR looked up from his paper quizzically and said, “Buy silver.”

That’s it? This wasn’t at all what I was expecting; it was in fact the exact opposite of what I was anticipating. I stood there dumbfounded unable to process this piece of, in retrospect, pretty sound investment advice. For years I dined out on that story at Dr. Bell’s expense.

So as I ponder Dr. Bell’s advice and think about what advice I can offer for young people I have to admit he was probably just looking at the commodity market that day and lifted it right from the business section. But that isn’t exactly the kind of advice most young people are really looking for from their elders.

In today’s world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, the Dr. Bell kind of advice would go over, well, like the proverbial lead balloon. Young people today would be more familiar with William S. Burroughs’ famously cheeky advice for young people about not buying a dog when they have a new baby in the house because the dog might kill the baby.

Honestly, this kind of advice probably isn’t what most young people are looking for either. So here I am caught between the worldly advice of Dr. Bell and William S. Burroughs’ bizarre advice regarding one’s choice of pet.

In the end of course there’s really only one piece of advice for young people and that is not to grow old. And since that is an impossible piece of advice the other best advice is to enjoy growing old. Because the alternative is to not to grow old. The logic is impeccable.

So besides William S. Burroughs’ sardonic ditty post the “blessed event,” when you Google “advice for young people,” you find things like “only worry about the things you can change, not the things you can’t,” which is not really bad advice, but come on. Pinterest has a whole list of one-liners like “stay true to yourself because there are very few people who will always be there for you.” Nice, really nice; kind of a backhanded negative piece of advice young people don't need?

There is also a great deal of risky and unrealistic advice like “surround yourself with people who get it.” I think a certain president is already doing that, sort of begs the question of what “getting it” means.

Then there is the rather business-like advice: “commercial content needs to be personally and continually refreshed.” That's the kind of dialogue box, or pop up kind of advice probably useful for a website developer.

My all-time favourite is “don't do illegal things because jail sucks really bad.” Then there's the downright depressing—“snowflakes always end up melting.” And if you can still get out of bed, follow that up with, “you are and always will be expendable.” And just in case you missed the point you can put that sweetie in all bold caps.

Better advice for young people might be something actually au courant like a quote from George Orwell, particularly relevant for our times from The Freedom of The Press: “To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance.”

If you are feeling particularly secular recall the Christopher Hitchens' bon mots, “That one cannot judge the value of an opinion simply by the amount of courage that is required in holding it.” Many of the little ditties that are the basis of advice for young people on the Internet slither into this one quite nicely.

I’m often tempted to write something devilishly literary, say something from a John Buchan novel: “There is a dry wind blowing through the East, and the parched grasses wait the spark.” Now that could be highly relevant too.

In the end I slide back into the “last refuge of the scoundrel” and like that old King Canute who commanded the waves to keep their distance to allow his own majesty to be exalted by the tides, I foolishly attempt to ward off the inevitable, like Dr. Johnson’s dictum about the man who knows he is about to be hanged in two weeks, it focuses the mind superbly, I come to my inevitable place of having to put my pen to page with full knowledge that there is a close link between stupidity and cruelty.

So, as we have seen, advice for young people ranges widely from the ridiculous to the philosophically sublime, it occurs to me therefore that if I am to escape the fate of many before me, and avoid the “are you putting me on?” moniker of every knave and chiseller I must restrict myself to excavating little nuggets perhaps from the classics, something with a little jazz band playing in the background from a quaint little period between the wars where a character from an Evelyn Waugh novel flicks her cigarette holder in the ashtray and says, “I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence…”

And so for this generation with the over-the-top hysteria of our time I offer this: Learn to understand the true meaning of heart, as an equal companion to reason. Read widely and pay attention to the classics, there is wisdom buried in the past. Learn to play a musical instrument and then learn to paint. Appreciate the value of understanding that you are in a relationship with the universe—a vast and mysterious part of us—and most importantly, may you never cease to wonder.

Oh, and, stay thirsty my friends.