12 Rules for Life In English

Coda
WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MY NEWFOUND PEN OF LIGHT?
In late 2016 I travelled to northern California to meet a friend and business associate. We spent an evening together thinking and talking. At one pointhe took a pen from his jacket and took a few notes.

RULE 12
PET A CAT WHEN YOU ENCOUNTER ONE ON THE STREET
DOGS ARE OK TOO
I am going to start this chapter by stating directly that I own a dog, an American Eskimo, one of the many variants of the basic spitz type.

RULE 11
DO NOT BOTHER CHILDREN WHEN THEY ARE SKATEBOARDING
DANGER AND MASTERY
There was a time when kids skateboarded on the west side of Sidney Smith
Hall, at the
University of Toronto, where I work. Sometimes I stood there and watched
them. There
are rough, wide, shallow concrete steps there, leading up from the street to
the front
entrance, accompanied by tubular iron handrails, about two and a half
inches in diameter
and twenty feet long. The crazy kids, almost always boys, would pull back
about fifteen
yards from the top of the steps.

RULE 10
BE PRECISE IN YOUR SPEECH
WHY IS MY LAPTOP OBSOLETE?
What do you see, when you look at a computer—at your own laptop, more precisely? You see a flat, thin, grey-and-black box. Less evidently, you see something to type on and look at. Nonetheless, even with the second perceptions included,what are you seeing is hardly the computer at all. That grey and black box happens to be a computer
right now, right here and now, and maybe even an expensive computer.

RULE 9
ASSUME THAT THE PERSON YOU ARE LISTENING TO MIGHT KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON’T
NOT ADVICE
Psychotherapy is not advice. Advice is what you get when the person you’re talking with
about something horrible and complicated wishes you would just shut up and go away.
Advice is what you get when the person you are talking to wants to revel in the superiority of his or her own intelligence.