Take for example my last visit to Border's Bookstore. I am cruising through the Travel - South American section of the store, butterflies beating against my ribcage in excitement for my pending Central/S. American romp. I begin to envision my spirit soaring over Machu Picchu, ingesting the ethereal essence of mystical mountaintops I will become one with, when suddenly I am blasted out of my daydream and brought back to the worn out wooden bookcases of Borders and a high-pitched piercing, "EEEEHHH Ahem, excuuuse me...heeelllooooo exCUUUUSE MEEEE!."
What the hell was that? Instantly I swing my head around to see a large, grumpy, middle-aged woman (picture Chris Farley playing the lady in Lunch Lady Land skit...without the hair net) with a stroller, violently flapping a piece of paper in front of the spaghetti-framed, black nail polish toting, Dariaesque looking girl behind the customer service desk . I am taken aback by the Lunch Lady's indiscrete bitch-slap worthy of an attitude, and continue to listen to see what must be so vitally important. Frightened Daria is on the phone, stuttered to the angry lady she has two people on hold, would love to help when she is finished, but if it is urgent, lunch lady can feel free to use the three open computers that read "Easy Finder: Need help finding a book, start here!"
Ms. Farley continues to yell, "I need you to help me find this book now, I am in a rush...it's called Self-Help, ahh something something." Wait, are you fucking kidding me? I begin to laugh and am waiting for Ashton Kutcher to run out to the customer service lady and tell her she got punked, but no, this helpless nagger was truly demanding that the employee drop everything she is doing to help Lunch Lady find a Self-Help book.
Wow, talk about starting on the wrong foot eh? This made me think, does this lady even want help? If she really wanted to start making a life-change, you would think that she could at least take the first step in maybe looking for the book herself, or at least go about it in a more polite way. This incident is just a trailer to the broader blockbuster smash I seem to buy a ticket to every day, called "America: Can You Just Do It For Me?"
There is such a saturation and craze in Self-Help ever since Opera blew up "The Secret" and Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth" and started a trendy movement towards individuals starting to realize they are the only person who is truly in control of their lives and in essence, the only person who can make themselves happy. This is a nice warm and fuzzy message that actually does hold absolute truth, but seems to get muddled in the mass marketing of books, radio, and TV shows. The problem with the commercialization of these books is that the vital core competency of changing one's life around is overlooked. This relates to the quick fix/easy-way-out scoliosis effect that has begun to bend our society's backbone out of allignment. Balancing your life and discovering true happiness takes years of analyzing one's behavior every day, not just reading a book called "Self-Help" and after the last page magically become cured of helplessness (Let alone forcing someone to help you find the Self-Help Savior).
I am not saying that anti-depressants, the government, or family parenting tools are detrimental to the well-being of an individual, on the contrary, they are able to help an individual ween some of the side-effects of a core problem. In all of these instances however, the main focus should be set on splicing together the short circuit in the mainframe of Self, not to just refurbish the outer shell of our human mechanism. Let's start taking some more initiative in changing ourselves, stop pointing fingers, don't keep looking for the easy way out, and we can learn to bask in our communal future of Self-Helpfullness!
