Just a Gwai Lo

In the following, I reply to AccordionGuy, who takes me to task in his usual style. I forget when.

AccordionGuy: “when a friend, especially a woman, asks you to listen to their problems, the point is not to rattle off solutions, but just to be there to listen. Friend support is not tech support. Oftentimes, the therapeutic value is not in the response, but the talking out.”

I acknowledge the power of venting. I needed to vent last night, and almost did it on my weblog. (I have a private LiveJournal—no, not that one—but instead of venting there, or here, I wrote about marriage. If you were looking for "the despair" of the previous incarnation of Just a Gwai Lo (those were a friend's actual words telling me what she liked about the site, it being on hiatus at the time), you won't find it. Stridence, maybe. But no more despair. (Well, a lot less of it at least.) This weblog, especially the personal section of it, was my place to get the stuff repeating inside my head out of my head.

The reason I wrote the listening piece is that I fell into the habit of thinking that listening meant solving. Also, listening meant hearing some pretty ugly stuff. It meant resisting the all-too-human urge to judge, and I lied to myself and to my friends when I said it was okay or that I didn't judge them.

He continues: “Fielding opinions and abdicating the captaincy of the ship that is Your Life are two very different things. Asking for advice is not necessarily handing the wheel over to someone and saying "okay, you drive," but is often saying "Hey, this is a little out of my area of expertise, what do you think?" or "I want to see if there are any angles I haven't thought of".” I have problems with people giving advice not because I reject the idea that other people have different viewpoints. Rejecting that idea would be insane, because people come in with various levels of experience—some have the fortune of being unencumbered by experience, but that can be and usually is unfortunate—

Also: “As for "'gratitude' is another way of saying 'why didn't I think of that?'", I must ask you to imagine me with a megaphone saying: "Put down the Ayn Rand and back away from it slowly with your hands where I can see them. This is for your own good."”

Actually, I got that from Heinlein. (Oh, and it's from a Heinlein passage that I've forgotten, so if you can prove that I get his viewpoint wrong, I'll admit to it). But point made.