Self-Help Your Self

I scan my inbox. Many “heal here” invitations. (Also many “write right here” come-ons, as I’ve said.) These days, there is a large segment of society committed to “changing” their lives. There is an equally large segment committed to healing the unhealed masses.

Many healing practitioners have internalized the “god within all of us” concept and gone to hell with the joke. They claim they not only have mastery over their own inner god, but can help you master yours, too!! Given what I write about, I can hardly point fingers. I have a strong healing bent myself. I have grown and benefited immensely from a lifetime of doing so.

But I know I won’t ever try to sell anyone on something “I and I alone” have to offer. I am a “take me or leave me” kind of gal. If I ever hold a healing retreat, I can promise great company and equally great food. Maybe my retreat will give you time to write or reflect in a supportive environment. To meet great people who care about the same things you do. You may give voice to your writing or listen to fellow authors. But as for instantaneous healing, absolutely no promises.

I take strong issue with the panacea approach out there today. The sages and the insightfully gifted world of people who want you to believe that if you jump on their bandwagon, your life will improve: Drastically! Dramatically! Incontrovertibly! Overnight!

I know from hard experience that just isn’t true. Life unfolds for everyone in finite minutes, days, hours, weeks, and events. Most days are humdrum, go-along-to-get-along days. Everyone has to keep body and soul together. Some of those events are unpleasant and traumatic. Others are pleasant and fleeting. On our birthdays, if we’re lucky, we get to reflect on what we gained in the preceding year. Somber events prompt more somber reflection.

Why and how and who we will be is a great unknown at our birth. The nature versus nurture debate has gone on for decades. We all arrive on this planet pre-programmed to some extent. But it makes sense – speaking as a mother – that much of who we are and are ever going to be is pre-installed. How else are we to account for vastly different personalities in the same family? Even among siblings? Even twins?

The tabula rasa theory about an infant arriving as a “blank slate” with no inherent characteristics or abilities is pretty much defunct. If it isn’t, it should be. I have concluded much of life is subjective and piecemeal. Everyone pursues the path in life that are drawn to if they have enough courage. Everyone has access to a piece of life’s truth. Like the parable of the elephant and the twelve blind men, everyone describes an elephant (or life) from their POV of the elephant.

Occasionally, a “heal-here” email will offer an especially well-crafted heartfelt pitch. But the question is are they able to supply the precise tools and exact methodology to heal OUR dysfunctional families and ease our personal pain? Questionable.

Ultimately, it is an exercise in self-help. Accepting responsibility to make our lives better and live a more fulfilling life is on us, and us alone. I don’t decry the mentors or guides who are out there. The problem is that the valuable guides and mentors work in a world awash in snake oil salespeople. Troubled hearts and minds are delicate and impressionable. The work is ours and ours alone. Own that and apply the principle of caveat emptor when choosing who to turn your delicate inner life over to. Buyer beware.

I shudder when I hear about “life-changing” work accomplished in a weekend seminar if only we learn to breathe properly. Or a writing and yoga retreat promises: “Your chakras will be opened to give full voice to the spirit within that is crying to be heard.”

What an arrogant assumption that we all even know what our chakras are or that we should value them highly enough to invest a month’s worth of wages and weekend into a gauzy promise of instantaneous spiritual conversion. Would that it was so easy. Achieving anything worthwhile usually isn’t.

Anything worthwhile I have ever heard of emerges from learning the age-old basics of respect and decency to live a good life. If you didn’t get that learning at home, then you have to find it for yourself. Over and over and over again.

It all boils down to a pretty simple formula. Don’t be a dick. If you don’t know how not to be one, then learn. That is your work.