I’ve been wresting with this question of advice for some time now, as many of you know, and never quite come to grips with explaining it or finding a comfortable place to feel about it. I’ve written a lot of troubled pieces about it.

Every day, I get a number of messages that begin with “I know you don’t want advice, but…”, and it always leaves me wondering why people send messages they know you don’t wish to get. I see there is something addictive about advice, especially online.  Those Google and Facebook Attention Engineers knew what they were doing, people don’t get hooked by accident.

There is a very powerful impulse many of us have to tell other people what to do, and offer them our idea of advice, wanted or not. And it has never been easier to do. On the hateful side, technology is turning many people into conspiratorial haters and flamers. On he softer side, it can promote epidemic grieving and worrying.

Most advice is, of course, offered with the best of intentions – to help a fellow human being, that is the essence of community. Some advice seems arrogant and intrusive, some  seems quite benign, even helpful.

I am learning that some of my resistance to advice stems from old issues that I need to  face and resolve,  not about what they need to resolve.

I have learned that whenever something bothers me over time, the answer is that I have to go work on myself. The problem is usually me. You can spend your life pointing fingers at other people, it is a find way of hiding. Real men can listen to the worst things about themselves, and I might actually be a real man. When I am angry or afraid, I know it is time to go to work on myself, a change to be better.

It would not occur to me that I should presume to give advice to a stranger, but then, I have learned that I am not a  stranger to many of the readers of my blogs and my books. Some have known me for years,  often better than I know myself. (Hardly any of my blog readers were surprised when I got divorced, they saw it coming in my posts and books long before I did.)

There is a disconnect, though, because I rarely know the people giving me advice, and perhaps that’s why it sometimes seems inappropriate and intrusive. I am understanding that there are ego issues here for me, sometimes, when I get advice that seems quite obvious to me – one person messaged me to tell me that donkeys need to have their hooves trimmed regularly – I do think:  why would anyone assume I don’t know this?

I see that this my problem all along, not really theirs, even if the advice seems evident and is unwanted. Like many people who were often told that they were stupid when they were young, I am sensitive to the idea.

Before e-mail and social media, this was never an issue for authors or people who worked with their minds.

People knew us only by our books, there was no other interaction. I never got advice from people I didn’t know, it would have been considered presumptuous and rude. Social media has changed that, since almost everyone can find a simple and free way to contact me. Suddenly, and later in life,  I find myself bombarded with very personal advice – about medications, videos, books, writing and photography, animals, weather, health, even love.

The sender, of course, sees the interaction as simple and bounded – him and her or me. But it isn’t so simple. The receiver is getting hundreds of these messages, and given the volume,  they take on a different context.  I can hardly go online without getting advice. Recently, I got annoyed with a friend who messaged me every Monday morning and asked “how was your weekend?”

He never calls me and rarely sees me. Why would this bother me? An innocent message for sure, but I get quite a few like it, and I can’t stop working to give lots of people who sent brief messages a detailed account of my weekend. I wrote back that if we were to be friends, we would have to work harder at it than this. I haven’t heard back.

I have always been shaped by the works of writers like Thomas Merton, who spent much of his life in solitude, sorting through his own mistakes, making his decisions alone.  If you live out of your head, space around your head becomes precious. It is very easy to get derailed. If you don’t work, you don’t eat.

Merton’s idea was to be alone in his hermitage so he could think. Then, he shared his ideas in books and letters. And there was Thoreau, who also worshiped solitude, and who passionately believed a cornerstone of identity and self awareness was making his own mistakes and learning his own lessons about life.

Thoreau would have been driven mad by advice pouring in on him at  Walden Pond, from animal rights to nutrition warriors to just plain old worriers.

It does sometimes feel patronizing. It is my job to take care of myself and I take it seriously.

But many people are angry with me if I question this idea of advice, they see me as grumpy or ungrateful. How could advice be bad? They are just trying to help. And at times, I think they are right for feeling this way.  I have, intentionally or not, created a community and that idea of advice is a part of being in a community. You don’t get to say precisely how everyone in the community will react to you.

All I really have to do with unwanted advice is ignore it, but the makers of software are attention researchers, and  much of the Internet is constructed to get the attention of people, that’s why millions of Americans look at their smartphones as often as 150 times a day. I think I am protecting my own focus and clarity as well as my identity.

I do feel encroached upon sometimes, a problem very much of my own making. I often wonder at messages, “is this really something I need to be asked or told?” But the sender isn’t thinking that, he or she is thinking, “gee, I can message him and tell him something I think he ought to know.”

Writing in the open – texts, Facebook messages, e-mail – I have to clearly define the boundaries that I want to exist around me. Boundaries are the sign posts of health and independence, especially for public people. And I have never relied on advice from strangers, I have never believed that just because something works for other people, that this means it is right for me. I never tell people they should do something because I am doing it.

I fought so hard for my identity, I want to make my own way.

This week, I wrote about my decision to stop taking statins, a controversial anti-cholesterol medication, and I got a torrent of responses, almost all supportive. I was prepared – health posts generate waves of advice. Advice is a social force now, it is permanently embedded in the DNA of our communications. It doesn’t ask me what I would prefer or care much.

And I see there is good advice and other kinds of advice, and I am learning to distinguish between the two.

A dozen physicians and some holistic health practitioners wrote me to congratulate me on making this decision about statins.  Lots of people had trouble with this medication, there were good alternatives. These messages were helpful to me.  I was worried about my decision. It was good to hear this from professionals, I was reassured.

One holistic healer wrote to say she had never written me before about health, because she wanted to respect my wishes to make my own mistakes. Bless her, her message of encouragement and prayers for me mattered. I was touched by her sensitivity.

I think the other kinds of messages – the specific ones – are the kind that have bothered me. One man wrote to tell me about a holistic medication I have been taking for several years. Another wrote to tell me there were alternatives to Western medicine, and still another wrote to urge me to take natural medications that I take every morning.

We are all living in a new world, many of us feel overwhelmed – stressed – by these new technologies and the radical impact they are having on our lives and culture – just look at the presidential elections and the awful damage cable news and political blots have done to our democracy.

My idea about advice is to accept, take what I want and need, and ignore what I don’t.

My sense of being threatened and invaded is a fantasy in many cases, and even if it isn’t, is simply a reflection of the new realities of our world. I can just learn from it, see it as another opportunity for me to grow, and  shut up about it.

I do not intend to be on my smartphone 150 times a day, or on Facebook for even 20 minutes a day. The Attention Engineers are good, but they will not take over my consciousness. I benefit greatly from this technology, more than I suffer. I have 3.6 million views on this blog so far this year.

Do I really want to be telling them what to say to me?

Yesterday, we were startled to learn that a check we had written had bounced. We forgot to transfer money from one account to another. This was upsetting to me, I was distracted and angry with myself. I crashed for a bit, felt like a failure. I gave myself some good and clear advice about checking balances, remembering what day of the month it was.

The message for me today was that life happens, and I can or should control very little of it. The spiritual challenge is to accept the world as it really is, and let go of all the wasteful laments in my head. It is a time to stop sticking my finger into dikes that can only overflow and wash me away.