The problem with self-help...

...is that the whole damn thing is so soul-less.

The subject of self-help is like a giant recipe book telling you that being able to do situps, lose weight, meditate, recover easily from stress, earn a 100,000 dollars a year, is meaningful in itself.

Putting self-help into the context of Plato's paths of goodness leading to a greater wholeness, self-help actually only outlines the directions towards something else, some greater good. It's like a road map, telling you how to get to the destination. Yet a lot of writers on self help emphasise too much on the activity alone, the road, the turn-offs, the diversions as the main aim. Being able to meditate or having a strong body is worthless in itself unless it connects to something more, on a different plane altogether. The end of the journey is what makes the journey meaningful, it is not the road itself.

What if being strong and healthy means that I am better able to take care of a person less healthy than I? That takes the ability to do 200 situps a day (I have this app on my ipod actually), is made meaningful because it translates into my ability to greater love for another person?

What if the fact that I am able to be quiet in myself and meditate, allow me to release stress so that I am more able to be there emotionally and mentally to support my friends and family?

What if the ability to be efficient in getting knowledge by various self-help methods can help me to be able to apply my knowledge to solving problems that affect a community?

I think self-help is great. Growing up, if I had access to all the blogs and podcasts on self-help that are out there now, I know it would have helped me in a lot of ways. Yet somehow I just wish that those who write or speak on this stuff can link it to the greater goodness, the deeper meaning in life, both in terms of love and of reason. I think this will take it from a plane of being some meaningless set of mantras recited to ward off bad luck, to something that has broader meaning and purpose in knowing what we really mean as human beings.

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