Confessions of an explaining person

I seem to work mostly as an advisor and teacher these days. I never set out to be; I fell into these roles by accident, and by request.

It never escapes me that there is something more than faintly ridiculous about giving advice to others. Why should any one human be better than any other at knowing what to do with this life? Surely we are all sometimes wise and sometimes foolish? Surely only we can know what is really best for our lives, without anyone else plunging in with counsel and guidance?

There is a ghazal sung by the peerless duo Jagjit and Chitra Singh that I have hummed since my teenage years. Now it comes back to regale and humble me, and advisors like me, in later life. Written by Kunwar Mahendra Singh Bedi, who used the pen-name ‘Sahar’, it pokes enormous fun at this business of being a mentor and guide.

Let me take you through my translations, verse by damning verse!

“They’ve come to talk me back to sense,
these kind, crazier-themselves people.”

Advisors often arrive with one hidden assumption: I am the sane one, you are the confused one; I shall fix you. How arrogant! The truth is, we’re all just different flavours of mad. We have our own blind spots, our own obsessions, our favourite pet answers. The danger is when we forget this, and present ourselves as neutral, objective custodians of rationality. Every advisor I know—this one included—diagnoses everyone else’s delusions while nursing a full library of their own.

“When need arrives, they melt away,
these close, too-familiar people.”

I know this from my own life: many so-called well-wishers shine in the good times and vanish in the storm. So for me this is brutal: I must not be beautifully visible when nothing is actually on fire. An advisor can’t just be a fair-weather presence; you also have to show up when things are thick.

“Now that I’m out of my senses,
here come the explaining people.”

This verse is about timing. When most people come for advice, whether friend or client, they might well be in a fraught state. Not calm, not centred; more likely exhausted and emotional. Foolish is the advisor who ignores the state of the advisee. The “explaining people” must not advise to the spreadsheet when the soul is distressed.

“If shrines and sanctuaries gave peace,
why would the taverns fill with people.”

This one is devastating for all our formal institutions, from churches to advisory firms. If the official places really gave solace and clarity, people wouldn’t need escape routes. The best advisors never turn their work into temple-ritual. They never offer virtue-signalling and poster-values in place of genuine relief and clarity.

“With all they know, they know so little,
these brilliantly unknowing people”

Modern advisors know oh-so-much: so many case studies and benchmarks and books and theorems. And yet they know so little, because pattern recognition is not understanding. In every act of advice, the actual human drama before you is all-important. What feelings are in play? What caused them to happen? What does it feel like to be this person?

Now that Sahar has shown us the pitfalls of being an advisor, we can consider the many antidotes. Know that advice is a conversation between two imperfect humans, not a sermon from a higher plane. Hang around when the music stops; be present when need is strongest, not just for your TED-talk moment. Don’t offer over-rational advice before emotions have subsided. Be more tavern than temple, where laughter and tears are permitted.

For the true sense-checkers I have known, it’s a two-way street. They approach every interaction with humility, and pick up as much as they pass on.

THE SIGNAL IN THE NOISE
The best advisors are not those who know the most, but those who stay the most brilliantly unknowing.

 

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