The Lone Boast.

I rarely give advice because it seems to me that to do so would require knowing somebody else’s mind intimately and comprehensively. I’ve never known anybody’s mind that well and I never shall, so I’m not qualified to give advice. If I’m asked for it I skirt around the request and offer thoughts on the situation. To do otherwise would seem arrogant.

And I can’t think of a single instance in my life when I’ve ever taken advice either. I’ve asked for it occasionally, but it was always a cover to get information and then I made my own mind up. I always went my own way.

Sometimes it got me somewhere and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it landed me on a feather bed and sometimes it threw me into a nest of scorpions. Sometimes it freed me and sometimes it trapped me. What I gained I mostly lost, and when I came unstuck I mostly managed to extricate myself.

And now I’m an insignificant person with nothing to crow about save my continued ability to breathe. I have no wealth, no power, no property, no influence, no exceptional skills. No great deeds will be celebrated in my name and there are no legacies of note for which I shall be remembered.

I am as nothing, but at least I got here in my own way.