Should you really give advice?

 My friend Melvyn and I used to argue about advice.

Giving it, he argued, is perhaps the most useless, futile thing you can do. When you are struck by the urge to advise, stifle it.

I always took this advice with a grain of salt. Melvyn is a professor of medicine, still teaching into his 90s. Students come to him and listen. He’s learned things that it would take years for bright young doctors to discover for themselves. He’s spent decades giving valuable advice.

Melvyn used to be a world traveler. Usually, we’re most aware of the value of advice when we travel. When you get to Paris, you might know exactly what you want to see and do with your limited time in the city. What you don’t know is where you can get a good cup of coffee and rest your feet for 10 minutes before you march on.

We buy guidebooks. We speak bad French to strangers. We seek that kind of advice because we need it.

I think Melvyn is right about this: We are more apt to seek directions on how to get to a coffee shop than to seek directions on how to live a good life.

We are more apt to see our needs for the small things, rather than the big.

• For a related idea about advice on writing, see “Rules of Thumb 1,” Nov. 28, 2021.