Erik Tyler [Tyler - TRIED and (Still) TRUE: Old Wisdom for a New Generation

TRIED & (STILL) TRUE

Also by Erik Tyler

The Best Advice So Far

and coming soon

You Always Have A Choice

2020 Erik Tyler

All Rights Reserved

Cover design: Erik Tyler

Frog on a Penny Farthing (& bugs!)

Illustrations: Michael Phipps

For booking information:

booking@TheBestAdviceSoFar.com

1st Edition

USA

For my mother, Barbara,

for preserving an invaluable family legacy through story,

and for exemplifying both wisdom and humility

with your own life story.

contents

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2.
3.
4.
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8.
9.
10.

thanks &
acknowledgements

Appreciation is a wonderful thing:

It makes what is excellent in others

belong to us as well. Voltaire

Mom In addition to the book's dedication, your ability to laugh, rain or shine, and to listen like it matters have infused this book. (After all, you were quite literally sitting beside me for a good deal of the writing of it Florida!)

Nana and Grampa Kwiatkowski You lived well, you live on in me, and your story is still being told. I miss you both more than I can say. (Cuckoo for you!)

Sean Our ongoing conversations about the craft of writing and of living have inspired me and stirred me to action often. You continually remind me that a guy and his words can be both smart and down to earth.

Jed During the dark stretches when it seemed this book might never see the light, your willingness to lend some of your enthusiasm, to ask thoughtful what if ? questions, and to dream out loud together made a world of difference.

Diana No matter what life has brought, you always manage to send the perfect note at the perfect time, infused with care, honesty and cheer. Watching you as a writer continue to set and pursue new goals regularly while being open about the struggles and obstacles you face has been an ongoing source of encouragement and motivation for me.

Chad For pushing me, for sending well-timed texts, for sharing what you see from your place on the road, for providing a swell retreat and for being ridiculous as needed thank you.

Dib No one else I know can say so much with so few words. How you turn a raise of eyebrow or a shift in tone into hope is some sort of voodoo, I'm sure of it. For everything , well you know.

Kathy For your fine-toothed comb and your enormous heart.

William Your willingness to listen to every word of this book (often more than once), to be vulnerable enough to laugh out loud or cringe or cry at all the right parts, to offer unfiltered feedback and to keep me pointed toward the finish line when I couldn't see it have all been indispensible. Oh, and microsculptimals !

Thank you to each person who has listened to or read my words, and who has been willing to share with me your own story in the process. You are constant reminders of why I do what I do.

Finally, as strange as it may seem from this side of the book, I'd also like to acknowledge and thank the many thinkers and writers from across the centuries and around the world, who devoted countless hours of toil and passion so that wisdom could be preserved beyond your lifetime and passed on to each new generation. Though you may be gone, you are not forgotten.

I've learned

that I still have a lot to learn.

Maya Angelou

introduction

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AMERICANS are obsessed with new .

While Notre Dame has stood proudly in Paris for more than eight centuries drawing as many as 50,000 visitors from around the world daily we in the States seem all too quick to bulldoze our history in favor of gleaming office buildings and freshly paved strip malls, losing irreplaceable treasures in the process.

From seasonal fashions to smart phones, cars to careers, religion to relationships, we've become conditioned to believe to accept as fact that old is inherently bad while new is not only good, but necessary . Even old body parts are subject to being replaced with newer, younger ones.

I completed my last book, The Best Advice So Far , exactly one year to the day after I'd started. I still remember typing the period after the last word of the last sentence of the last chapter. It was exactly 3:18 AM. I was so into what I'd been writing that, when my fingers finally stopped typing, it was a good minute or two before the realization set in: I just finished the book . I didn't know what one should feel or do on such an occasion. All I could think to do was to drive to the all-night convenience store, buy a Nestl Quik strawberry milk and drink it in the aisle, as a sort of toast to the occasion.

There was a sudden flurry of activity around the e-book release. Reactions were overwhelmingly positive, including endorsements from a New York Times bestselling author and a vice president from Google. Even the title itself was based on exclamations from a lifetime of mentoring that had led to that point: Thank you! I never would have thought to try what you suggested. It really was the best advice I've gotten!

It was a rush. It all felt so new .

I'll never forget receiving the first print copy about a year later. The anticipation of opening the box. The heft of it. Even the smell. Again, it was the beginning of a new adventure.

Any author will tell you that we succumb just as easily to the lure of new . There's nothing quite like the feeling of having a new release. Conversely, if we're being honest, there's a sort of how to say it? tarnished feeling, as the gap between the copyright date and the one on the current calendar widens. That is, in simplest terms, old to a writer begins to feel synonymous with bad .

And yet the words and thoughts and stories inside haven't changed .

Our collective addiction to new has us continually scrambling to read the latest releases by hip, young motivational writers who promise to reveal their five secrets and never-before-heard solutions to our problems all neatly packaged in slick and impressive sounding buzzwords.

I went to great pains with The Best Advice So Far to point out across social media, on my blog and inside the book itself that I take no credit for having invented the advice in that book. While the book was new, the ideas it contained were not .

In that respect, even from its first day out in the world, the book was very old .

Let me suggest here, as I did at the start of The Best Advice So Far , that if something is true if it works then it's always been true. The best anyone can do is pay attention, discover it, put it into practice, and pass it along to others.

Put another way, while language and culture may change with time, wisdom itself is old .

Timeless.

That is all to say, our grandmothers and great-great-grandpappies (all of whom, mind you, were young and quite hip in their day) knew stuff.

Important stuff.

They were smart people. Tenacious. Resourceful.

And despite their not having had laser teeth whitening or social media followings or audiences of thousands paying $500 a head to attend conferences in order to hear what they had to say, they'd learned a thing or two about what really matters .

How to live at peace in a war-torn world.

How to stretch a dollar during the worst of times.

How to navigate conflict and to be a good neighbor.

How to have character in the face of trials.

How to be truly happy, come what may.

To modern ears, the speech these old souls used may sound quaint, outdated even archaic. Yet the principles for living remain every bit as powerful as they ever were.

It is my hope, within the pages that follow, to blow the dust off some moldering maxims from yesteryear, to give them a good spit-shine, and to introduce a new generation of discerning thinkers to the inimitable insights, sheer brilliance and just plain common sense captured by these tried-and-(still)-true gems of practical wisdom.