Self help books

The world is full of self help books, how to be a better dad, how to become a millionaire, how to seduce the opposite sex and who can forget, how to get 6 pack abs. The latter adorns at least one fitness/lifestyle magazine every month. It just makes me wonder if these books did really help anyone but the coffers of the publishers and the authors. 

These books would in theory work if one changed certain things about oneself. Maybe diet, exercise, behaviour but mostly change oneself to think differently and behave differently consequently becoming a different person. 

That may sound probable if not at least possible. 

We are a sum of our yesterdays. Everything we are from how we feel a certain thing tastes to how we react to different situations is an amalgamation of what we have experienced. These experiences are connected with each other through the glue of logic or faith, which together forms our  set of beliefs and passions. 

There are many reasons why I think reverse engineering oneself, without the forethought of building an experience to modify one's thought process subconsciously or a time machine to go back in time to change what caused the unwanted behaviour, is ambitious to grossly understate it.

 Everyone wants to change but most can't. To become someone else one has to live a different life. If you do what you always have, you will always get what you've always got.   

Wake Work Sleep Repeat

Our generation is the most advanced that has ever lived. We live longer, have access to more food, better healthcare on an average than any generation before us. This however, also means that we spend more of our lives working, doing jobs. 

We go to school, then college then get a job, get married have kids, pass our genes, help them go through the cycle and then die. We live our days like an old typewriter, typing in the same words in different ways each day the carriage returns, we run from once place to other pushing things into place, doing chores, making rent, feeding ourselves, making plans, executing plans and entertaining ourselves. There are enough distractions to keep us occupied and away from thought until our bodies decay and we eventually but surely die. 

Do we ever stop and wonder with the bemusement of a child? Why should one become a brick in another wall of humanity and all that it is right now? Why should one work or have a job? Why have money dictate who we work under and who works under us?  Why does society seem to have a mind of its own and why is its mind so narrow? Why are we here, where were we before this and why weren't we consulted? If we have a finite time here and if our deaths are both uncertain and unquestionable, why should we spend most of it doing something we don't like to buy things we don't need? What is true happiness at the bottom of it all? Is it finding love and companionship, sex and orgasms, everything that money can buy, or is it finding god ? 

How wonderful it would have been if I could just choose one. Money is good option because it can buy almost anything even god and companionship. Almost every big temple has a VIP entry and there are plenty who prefer moolah over mush, presidents over passion. 

A part of me passionately disagrees, a part of me knows.    

What is dead may never die!

"Living things avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium": Erwin Schrödinger

It is difficult to deal with death, especially when it is someone one knows well and is a big part of one's life. It is just one of those inevitable truths in life that seem to shock us despite how conspicuous things may be.

I have a difficult time dealing with death. I feel nothing about it. I don't feel good, I don't feel bad, I just feel an empty void.

I lost a friend when I was in 12th grade. He had been close but had drifted apart over the years. I still met him on a weekly basis. We had spent quite a lot of time together. I had known him for at least 9 years then. My friend had lived away from his family and his family had always made sure he was never spoilt, so that he may study hard and make something of himself, ah the irony! He died when he was undergoing a cosmetic surgery because of an overdose of anaesthesia. It was a depressing sight, his parents and all his relatives gathered around his corpse and beat their hearts out crying. His father stood outside his house, talking to people as they came in "I came here to surprise him with a bike and he gave us all a surprise!" he said as he wept uncontrollably.

I couldn't shed a tear. I know of strangers who could have.