Were I ever asked about giving advice in later life, my first rule would be: Don’t.

That’s because hardly anyone welcomes advice or values it. Even when they earnestly ask for it, normal people, deep down, do not really want to receive direction from anyone else.

They prefer to be left free to do what they want, even at the cost of making dreadful mistakes. Better to follow their own path, they feel, than to surrender initiative to someone else.

I feel some sympathy for this view: after all, does not taking your own chances provide some of the excitement in living?

You feel free to enter upon whatever actions you want, even if they lead to grief. At least you have enjoyed the latitude to choose.

Rather than being simply prudential, like everybody else I want to risk error. After all, what is human life but a series of mistakes?

Anyone who has been a parent is especially knowledgeable about how far advice goes. As Harry Truman is reported to have said: “I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.”

And he had only one child!

Older people have special reason for not giving advice. This statement, of course, goes against the conventional image of elders filled with wisdom designed for sharing with the young.

But La Rochefoucauld, the French 17th century wit, can give us pause, as usual. This philosopher says: “Old people like to give good advice, as solace for no longer being able to provide bad examples.”

These moralistic thoughts may serve as an introduction to some reflections about a recent visit to my dermatologist.

On this occasion he did not find any major problems on my face and head. The visit turned out to be fast, much to my satisfaction.

However, he did spot four of what he termed keratoses and promptly zapped them off. I felt fortunate to have left his office without further need of treatment.

A few years ago, after all, I had required two facial surgeries for a dermal sarcoma that was clearly dangerous. Since that time I have taken extra pains to protect my face against wide exposure to the rays of the sun.

This experience, combined with reflection upon the habits of the American public, has led me into the advising temptation. I confess that I stand on the edge of counseling everyone, especially young people, to avoid exposing themselves to the sun.

Warnings from dermatologists are only one influence on my views. Observation of my age peers also has a part in this temptation. Seeing how badly wrinkled many of us are serves as another forceful reminder of what the sun can do to human skin in just a few decades.

Some of the wrinkles currently featured on my face may possibly owe their existence to one incident from adolescence. After a hot day spent at the beach in the late summer of 1949, I came home with an awful sunburn.

The consequent two weeks of pain and discomfort it caused me still stay lodged in my memory. At least, the incident taught me never again to risk such exposure.

It was only in the 20th century that millions of pale people in bathing suits rushed to the beach in search of sun. The habit now strikes me as weird. Why does anyone want to damage their skin and, quite possibly, prepare for looking more haggard than they are?

They flatter themselves that getting a tan will make them look beautiful. And indeed it may. But skin doctors consider tans a sign, not of good health, but rather of skin injury. Why anyone would ever go to a “tanning salon” lies beyond my comprehension; it’s just asking for trouble.

If you see me walking around town wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat in summertime or an Irish cap in fall and winter, do not think me a style freak. My motive is not fashion but skin protection.

You will never see me wearing shorts. Not only does most of the population look really bad in them, but they offer fine exposure to damaging sun.

For fear these remarks sound merely misanthropic, let me present myself as a lover of the human body. Whatever our defects, we are magnificently made. Late-life visits to a wide array of doctors constantly can remind us of our splendor.

Each physician, approaching you from a different angle of interest and expertise, pays tribute to the complexity of the human body. Your cardiologist sees you differently from your orthopedist, your ophthalmologist from your gastroenterologist. But they all remind you of how intricately you are made.

Let me end with ─ what else? ─ advice.

Avoid unduly exposing your body to the sun.

Richard Griffin