The Side Effects of Endorphins

What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

My best advice to give to someone younger than myself is not to give advice to people that are younger than yourself.

I say that with a tad of tongue in cheek, but there’s a lot of truth to that. I remember some of the advice I was given by my parents. And I’m not faulting them as that all they really knew.

Everybody else in the family works in the steel mill. My parents encouraged me to work in the steelmill. Their parents did it and most people in Berks County toiled in the mills.

Mark you should have had children earlier. I was given this piece of sage advice when my daughter was two. Hindsight has perfect vision and there was no way I was going change that.

Don’t go swimming until 30 minutes after eating – in retrospect I’m kind of surprised by this advice, because usually there were so many kids around the parents were motivated to have us out of their hair.

I hope you see where I’m going with this. I try not to dole out advice until I’m asked for advice.

Advice I consistently give out is this. Just be you. You are on your own path and journey., We have planted the seeds so go out there and grow as you see fit.

My kids are now raising kids. As hinted at earlier., we all have issues with our parents and how we were raised. Even though we have issues, we appreciate the nurturing and love we were given. There is no way I would give advice about parenting to my own kids.

I believe I learned just as much from people younger than me as they learned from me. Of course, that’s ignoring the law of large numbers.

All I can advise is that nothing is forever. Here is an excerpt from a story I wrote a while back. The character Breve is loosely based on myself. Breve just proposed the idea of marriage.

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Breve I am going to tell you where I will see you in twenty-five years. I can be cynical about the institution of marriage. It is myth of sorts. Divorce runs rampant on my side of the family and who knows how long it will take me to get sick of this country of yours. Who knows how that works out? I love you Breve, which was the first time she used that word, but there are no guarantees in life.

She once again looked at the slowly sinking crescent moon as it was quietly dipping below a barely visible set of stratocumulus clouds. She hesitated for a second and removed nonexistent hair from her temple.

She then raised one eyebrow showing she was ready to speak.

“A quarter of a century is a long time from now. It is as long as we have been alive.”

Breve started to interrupt but she once again raised her eyebrow. He felt like he knew her well.

“I see both of us happy and successful. We will have a great run of play. I picture you sitting in a restaurant visiting our children wherever they decide to live. I assume that will be somewhere in Europe. Given my citizenship that will be in Germany. It is a wonderful place to get an education. “

“Let me get this straight. You see us having two children and I am visiting them without you. I assume you think we will not be together then.”

She smiled flirtatiously and raised her eyebrow once again.

“And we are going to have two children?”

“That’s my gut feel.”

He sat and looked back at where the moon once sat in the western sky. A gentle warm rain started to fall. He sat and stared, taking in the absolute beauty of this warm spring evening.

“That sounds good to me.”

I am Breve. I write this little reflection in a torn and tattered well-loved journal that I packed especially for this solo trip to Mainz. What a lovely peaceful city this can be. I will master the language someday. My kids are on the next train and will be here soon.