Thou Shalt Remember That Unsolicited Advice Is a Sacred Path to Humiliation

It was junior year, and I was inspecting the high school football team’s weight room—a dank temple of testosterone and tobacco spit. As a self-anointed expert (and Junior Olympic Weightlifting champion, lest anyone forget), I felt entitled to critique everything: the dumbbell selection, the ergonomics, the hygiene, the very air of the place. The floor looked like it had been carpeted with sunflower shells and Copenhagen runoff.

I had just begun my sermon on the spiritual poverty of their equipment when the team’s starting linebacker, Erik Simonson—a slab of muscle with the conversational subtlety of a freight train—paused mid–military press. His gray-blue eyes locked on me like radar.

“Is someone paying you to be an asshole,” he said evenly, “or are you doing volunteer work?”

The weight room erupted. Even I laughed, because the line was perfect—surgical in its cruelty, poetic in its timing. But laughter has an aftertaste, and when I got home that night, the sting of public mockery still clung to me. I turned to my spiritual advisor, Master Po.

“Master Po,” I said, “why did I invite that kind of humiliation? My criticisms were valid.”

“Grasshopper,” he said, sipping tea with an aggravating serenity, “you must not go through life believing people crave your opinions. You are not a paid social commentator, though I know your heart yearns to be one.”

“But weren’t my criticisms legitimate?” I persisted.

“Legitimacy,” said Po, “is irrelevant. The truth is like chili powder—best applied sparingly. Even those who beg for feedback rarely mean it. They desire flattery dressed as honesty. Therefore, you must learn the art of selective silence. Speak briefly, and when possible, not at all.”

I sighed. “But I love the sound of my own voice.”

Po smiled the smile of a man who’s been disappointed by many students before me. “Yes,” he said, “but what sounds like sweet music to your ears may strike others as the shriek of ignorance, emotional poverty, and uninvited arrogance.”

The next day, I returned to the weight room and said nothing. The linebackers grunted and lifted. I stood in silence, spiritually enlightened and socially intact—a monk in a monastery of iron plates.