Are you able to help yourself ? - Part 2
If only self-help books could help us find what it promises, that genre would eventually self-disintegrate or wouldn’t be required anymore. On the contrary, ever since Dale Carnegie wrote the bestseller “How to win friends and influence people” in 1936, we know for a certainty, the self-help genre has not only grown into a 10 billion dollar worth industry, but has also captured the hearts and minds of every human being.
But questions still linger even as our hearts remain restless — are we really happy, notwithstanding those dancing emoticons on our Facebook post? Are we at peace with our neighbors, if not with our Boss? Can we unabashedly say we are free from the fear of death? Did we really make those quick bucks and if so, did they really stick with us and more importantly, helped us overcome the challenges during COVID19 lockdown? Or can we say, without batting an eyelid, that we aren’t worried about our future?
Self-help books like “You can win,” “The art of happiness,” “The millionaire next door,” “The anxiety cure,” “The seven spiritual laws of success,” and “The magic of thinking big” arrived on the scene with much pomp and fanfare like Santa Claus — one which evokes images of an abnormal sized red-colored sack full of personalized gifts. While one cannot deny some self-help literature changed the thought process of some for the better, the overall performance seems rather mediocre. We constantly hear reports of wealth inequality, suicide, social fragmentation, and divorce increasing almost every day.
So, what can really help humanity which is ravaged more by hopelessness than by an invisible virus? The ongoing pandemic and the recent back-to-back death of two prominent actors in India has smashed every ego, including self-belief and belief in a certain tool or process or self-help books/gurus. And in my opinion, this pandemic would probably be remembered much later for the “human despair” it unleashed more than the “human lives” it consumed.
In 1670, Blaise Pascal — the French mathematician — published Pensées, in which he echoes something similar: “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”
Like Pascal, we too now pleasantly realize — as an epiphany of sorts — there is a limit to our wisdom, technological and scientific achievements; there is a sudden moratorium on how much our family and friends can help us; and, even a limitation on how much we can help ourselves. We need something yonder and beyond this world.
Thank God, there is a good news! Only when we hit the rock bottom of our lives, can we truly comprehend the finitude of humanity and thereby our need to experience the all-surpassing greatness and love of God. A God who not only created us and knows what we need, but also longs to have a personal relationship with us by rescuing us from our sins and human frailty.
But questions still linger even as our hearts remain restless — are we really happy, notwithstanding those dancing emoticons on our Facebook post? Are we at peace with our neighbors, if not with our Boss? Can we unabashedly say we are free from the fear of death? Did we really make those quick bucks and if so, did they really stick with us and more importantly, helped us overcome the challenges during COVID19 lockdown? Or can we say, without batting an eyelid, that we aren’t worried about our future?
Self-help books like “You can win,” “The art of happiness,” “The millionaire next door,” “The anxiety cure,” “The seven spiritual laws of success,” and “The magic of thinking big” arrived on the scene with much pomp and fanfare like Santa Claus — one which evokes images of an abnormal sized red-colored sack full of personalized gifts. While one cannot deny some self-help literature changed the thought process of some for the better, the overall performance seems rather mediocre. We constantly hear reports of wealth inequality, suicide, social fragmentation, and divorce increasing almost every day.
So, what can really help humanity which is ravaged more by hopelessness than by an invisible virus? The ongoing pandemic and the recent back-to-back death of two prominent actors in India has smashed every ego, including self-belief and belief in a certain tool or process or self-help books/gurus. And in my opinion, this pandemic would probably be remembered much later for the “human despair” it unleashed more than the “human lives” it consumed.
In 1670, Blaise Pascal — the French mathematician — published Pensées, in which he echoes something similar: “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”
Like Pascal, we too now pleasantly realize — as an epiphany of sorts — there is a limit to our wisdom, technological and scientific achievements; there is a sudden moratorium on how much our family and friends can help us; and, even a limitation on how much we can help ourselves. We need something yonder and beyond this world.
Thank God, there is a good news! Only when we hit the rock bottom of our lives, can we truly comprehend the finitude of humanity and thereby our need to experience the all-surpassing greatness and love of God. A God who not only created us and knows what we need, but also longs to have a personal relationship with us by rescuing us from our sins and human frailty.
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