My Advice to an Imaginary Younger Brother

If I had had a younger brother, I would have wanted to share with him the following advice:

---"You might want to try not sprinkling salt on your food. You will get plenty of sodium from other sources. And it's good for your long-term medical health to avoid excessive consumption of sodium."

---"In your dietary lifestyle, you might want to consider making the conversion from mayonnaise to mustard or some other low-cholesterol, low-fat condiment. That conversion will help you to lead a healthier and longer life."

---"If you love pursuing one sport, but don't currently pursue any other sports during your leisuretime, you might want to consider adding another sport or two to your skills repertoire. This will give you more chances for meeting new people. Also, it will give you other sports to pursue if for some reason you cannot find an exercise partner in your favorite sport of tennis, for instance."

---"If you meet a girl or young woman who intrigues you, see if you can develop a good platonic rapport with her. Do you find that you enjoy your in-person conversations with her if you keep those conversations focused on non-romantic topics? Do her hobbies and pastimes and personal values and religious beliefs appeal to you? Do you feel relaxed and comfortable while chatting with her about her favorite sports or her favorite places, for instance."

----"Don't ever shy away from smiling at other persons. Most people do regard a smile as a sign that you are a true gentleman, and that you are people-friendly. Most people when they see you smiling will regard you as inspirational and inspired. You will suggest to them the term 'sublime beauty' when you smile at them."

---"Keep in mind that if you are consistently civil and law-abiding and honorable and hygienic and facially cleanshaven and clean-talking, people will describe you as being a true gentleman. They will appreciate this great trait of yours, and they will comment to you about how rare it is to meet a 'true gentleman' these days!"

---"If you want to enjoy the elegant and refined life of a gentleman, you might ask yourself whether any of your current mutual-consent male friends or any of your current mutual-consent male acquaintances strike you as being true gentlemen. The more that you choose to associate with true gentlemen, the greater your own ability to lead the life of a true gentleman yourself."

---"You might want to keep a personal file at all times in which you keep notes about each of your leading non-romantic or platonic sources of enjoyment and delight in your life. If you enjoy Spanish Renaissance architecture or public botanical gardens, for instance, by all means include either of those to your list. If you delight in reading about societal innovations in Sweden, you could also add that to your list. If you thrill to subway systems, you could add that to your non-romantic passions list. If you enjoy playing clay-court tennis, you could add that to your list as well. You could also add the names of each of your favorite popular songs and each of your favorite poems to that file."

---"If you meet someone you feel sure you might like to keep up with on a multi-year basis, you might want to ask that person to please tell you his or her middle name. If you have that person's first name, middle name, and last name, and you keep that information in your permanent address book, you will find it much easier to keep up with that person."

---"You might want to consider learning a fair amount about homemaking skills. I offer this advice partly because most men of the 21st Century will spend many years of their life either as a single person who has not yet married or as a person whose marriage failed and who is now a divorced person living alone. A single man has a great need to know how to cook for himself and perform some sewing work---how to sew a button back onto his shirt after a button has fallen off his shirt, for instance. A single man can save thousands of dollars per year if he has good home economics skills---including his household bookkeeping skills, I might add."

---"Look upon yourself as a Scholar-Athlete, and you will feel a happy and healthy harmony in your life. That harmony will spare you from the excesses of either intellectual elitism or, on the other hand, an anti-intellectual and crude muscularity to your personal style."

---"Strive to pursue reading during your leisuretime for at least 30 minutes every day. That daily reading discipline will be an enormous and pervasive benefit to you throughout your life."

----"If you don't enjoy reading, ask yourself whether you are reading about the topics and themes that intrigue or fascinate you the most. If you are intrigued by professional tennis players, for instance, but you never read about that subject, this might help explain why you find reading to be an unpleasant experience."

---"Keep in mind that every year you grow older, you are increasingly in the position of yourself being an adviser and counselor to persons younger than you are. Your identity as a younger brother will evolve into your new role in which you are expected to offer wisdom to others."

---"If you pursue a life in which you consistently abstain from drinking alcohol and from consuming any and all tobacco products and all illicit drugs, you will have a much happier and healthier life."

---"If you generally exclude persons who are addicted to alcohol or any illicit drug from your own life, you will find that you benefit emotionally and morally in a very pervasive manner. Acquaintances and so-called 'friends' who are themselves addicted to alcohol or drugs might otherwise have led you astray."

---"It is wise and prudent for you to learn a variety of career-related and vocational skills. This protects your ability to be financially solvent and pay all your bills throughout your life---even during periods in which there are lots of cutbacks of jobs in your primary career field."

---"If you exclude persons from your own life who exhibit a contempt or defiance of your own Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, or privacy rights, you will find that the persons whom you do agree to associate with are far more trustworthy, far kinder, and better for yourself as a human being."

----"Keep in mind that the vast majority of Big Brother figures out there are domineering, censorious, dictatorial, repressive, unappreciative, cruel, exploitative, unethical, dishonest, sly, intrusive, law-breaking, or sadistic male persons who do not merit your own fraternal camaraderie or Brotherly Love."

----"If the clubs or organizations you join are wholesome and law-abiding and creatively fulfilling, you are very likely to make several lasting mutual-consent friends from those civic group involvements of yours."

---"Always keep a file that cites each of the personal traits and attributes of yours that you love the most. It is particularly crucial for a younger brother to maintain a year-round file of this type, since younger brothers generally do not receive as many words of praise as the older siblings do."

---"Whenever you hear anyone mention to you that younger brothers tend to be 'under-achievers,' make a point of pursuing research about younger brothers of American history and world history who were, in fact, very prolific achievers. That biographical information will serve as a fine response to the many who claim that younger brothers are somehow pre-destined to incompetence and failure and a life of under-achievement."

---"Do not let anyone dictate to you what your own priorities should be in life. If you want to move to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, because that prospective town for yourself has lots of public outdoor clay tennis courts, that is certainly your Freedom of Speech-protected legal right. If you want to move to Salt Lake City, Utah, because that city offers greater societal support for an alcohol-free, tobacco-free, illicit-drug-free, clean-talking, facially-cleanshaven, cleancut, hygienic, law-abiding, and law-enforcement-minded lifestyle such as your own, that is also your prerogative. You do not live in a communist nation, so you are free to move to any city in the country where you hold citizenship--the USA being that country."

---"Be particularly kind and generous and appreciative toward the gentlemen and ladies who politely pursue hobbies and sports with you that are emotionally healthy for you as well as medically healthful for you. Your nice tennis partners and your nice racquetball partners are true lifesavers for you in your own life. And you will find that many of your tennis partners and racquetball partners will also be persons with whom you enjoy sharing a meal and conversation or sharing tea and conversation. And on the birthdays of your tennis partners or racquetball partners, you might even want to buy those athletic partners of yours something special to show your appreciation--- a birthday cake shaped like a tennis racquet or racquetball racquet, for instance."