It started with a simple question “Why don’t you like this book? It
seems to me it gives some common sense suggestions”. The answer puzzled
me… “Maybe that’s what I dislike about it, that we have to read
something that teaches us to do common-sense things”. Fair enough. Got
my tiny chaotic wheels turning. Why do we feel the need to read about
living? Don’t we know how to think, walk, behave without a book
explaining it to us?
How come there are so many “self help” books around – and so popular?
Did we actually forget how to live? Or is this just a habit of looking
for the best way of doing things, without the trial & error process,
as there’s no time to lose in the every day race we are running?
I admit I am also quite interested to the books that (try to) teach
you how to think, evaluate, live, feel… this is what I find scary. I am
actually waiting for the books to tell me how I should feel and explain
why I am not and what I should do in order to… It’s a vicious circle.
What is also kind of stupid is that (some of) those books don’t
actually make you think, they are assessing the situations and give you
the solutions that you have to adopt if you want to be ”better, happier,
healthier”. The entire “civilized” world is focused on these
adjectives. Maybe we have too much of everything, don’t know what to do
with it. Maybe we are too high on the famous “needs pyramid”, so we
started looking for easy recipes to happiness. I wonder if Haiti’s
population is currently considering ”being zen” and “making peace with
their inner-child” as solutions to more happiness in their lives. Yes,
of course it’s a caricature, but maybe less that you’d think. It’s a
very strange world we’re living in…
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