My sister, the “real” journalist in our family, has a hilarious* piece on the latest and most popular self-help books here.  If you squint hard, I suppose you could see what I do as a form of self-help, or perhaps more accurately a barnacle on the whale of the self-help industry, so I thought I’d give it a link despite the possible cries of nepotism that might ensue (you can thank your former host Lou Schuler for suggesting the I blog this today).

One interesting point that the lovely and talented** Ms. Heffernan’s piece touches on is the relationship between the popularity of a given program of self-help and the lack of actual action the program requires of the reader.  Soaring above the other titles—both in popularity and appeal to the brilliant Ms. Heffernan***—is The Secret, which, in case you live in a cave and don’t know by now, contends that if you want something—literally anything—all you have to do is wish for it really, really hard. 

And then what, you ask?  Well, nothing.  If you wish for something hard enough, you just...get it:  a car, a house, a relationship, glowing health, fame, riches beyond measure.  You don’t have to DO anything.

For anyone who has put in the hours and months and years that it takes to, say, build up a business, lose a lot of weight, or fight through a life-threatening disease, this is a laughable notion, as the transcendently eloquent Virginia H.**** makes clear:

[Author Rhonda] Byrne won me over with her promise that if you think it, it will come. Instead of shopping around for home insurance, I can simply suppress thoughts of building collapses and fires set by left-on burners. Instead of paying off credit cards, I can ask the universe for a windfall. Then I imagine all the credit cards I’ve ever had turning into silvery butterflies in the blue summer air, and flying to South Africa, and bringing back blood diamonds on their wings, along with the address of a local diamond-buyer who’s paying top dollar.

Pretty funny, and yet...

I’ve bought a few of these self-help books over the years.  Back in college, when my then-girlfriend and I had a major argument, I bought a copy—shudder—of MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS, now a true giant in the self-help industry.  My purchase appeased her and reassured us for a time that both of us were “willing to work on the relationship.”  I read the first few pages maybe a half-dozen times, then the book gathered dust on my bookshelf until I sold it at a stoop sale a few months later. 

I did really try.  And among other things, that gesture—as modest, hopeful, and even disingenuous as it was--did help to sustain our relationship for a few more years.  The best of these books represent the fervent hope that we’re in fact up for the challenge of our lives.  The smiling personalities on their covers suggest the possibility that our seemingly-overwhelming problems can in fact be contained somehow, bound between pleasingly-textured, brightly-colored covers. 

You may or may not get some useful information out of a book, but you will for feel a smidgen better about yourself, even just for the ride home from Barnes & Noble...maybe even just for the 30 seconds while the cashier is ringing you up and before you walk to your car and realize you’ll never in a million years crack this book open.  But for those of us with real lives and real problems and not a lot of time or energy to fix them, well, those moments of bliss are well worth it. 

The Secret trumps all self-help books because they’re onto us, and indeed, onto the real reason we buy self-help books at all.  If we ever get around to reading them, the sinking feeling these books instill is that the nuts-and-bolts reality of making tough changes is way more than we bargained for, and it’s just way, WAY, WAY too hard.  We really just want to be told that everything’s okay, and we’re fine as we are.

Let’s face it:  the sad truth is that reorganizing our lives is hard.  We’re not likely to cut out sugar entirely.  We’re probably not going to be able to resist every impulse buy, and our daily pros / con worksheets will probably drop off after a few well-intentioned days.

Enter The Secret to reassure us that we don’t have to do any of that.  Ah.  Just keep on right on wishing. 

Laying aside for a moment the glimmer of truth in this argument—that energy follows thought, that you have to set your mind to something in order to get it done—even putting that aside and saying for a moment that it’s all nonsense, it’s still a reassuring notion, and small wonder that the book is such a hit. 

I mean, I like wishing for good things.

*Virginia:  I trust this makes us even from the July, 1975 leg-biting incident. 

**...and this should take care of that fifty bucks I owe you from that dinner we had together when I’d “forgotten my wallet.”

***...and for the 3:00 AM phone calls (exact number forgotten, somewhere between two and seven, various dates) because I “forgot we live on separate coasts.”   By the way, what’s your new number?  Mom never seems to have it handy when I ask. 

****...are there any job openings for a guy with my ‘credentials’—and I use the term loosely—at the TIMES?  I mean, how hard would it be to get me a gig?  It’s A PHONE CALL for the love of...hello?  Virginia??