A rant about reading

So as most of you know, I am getting my MA in psychology. I have a few friends with whom when I get together our conversations always run to the deep side of things. These conversations have to be stopped after about 6 hours simply because it gets far to late (think 12, 1 am) and we need to get some sleep. The time spent typically goes something like this. We grab a bite and start talking and then finish up wherever we are, move on to getting a coffee or tea and sit there and chat for a couple of hours and then end up driving around or sitting in a park and continueing said conversation. We had one of these conversations recently and talked all manner of psychological things. And I found myself embroiled in a bit of an inner battle. This friend had mentioned that he reads a lot of self help books, and to be honest, a lot of them in my opinion are a bit of a fad, they come and make this supposedly profound insight , get a lot of media attention and then disapper....think The Secret. That book brought positive thinking to the forefront of the world claiming some magical power to attract good things to you. Bottom line of it is: if you have a positive outlook on life, positive people want to be in your life and you see life from a paradigm of being positivitiy as opposed to negativity. It really is nothing earth shattering.

This friend of mine brought up another book that had much the same impact titled "The power of now." This book had much the same impact as The Secret. Everyone is reading it and raving about it and how it has changed their life. What is the book about? Immediacey. Living in the present moment and not kiving in the past nor living in the what if's of the future. Nothing too earth shattering. And yet, with the press it gets it would seem to have rocked the world. My friend and I discussed this book. My take? Well I had a few reactions. First, I gave the book credit to the concept, albeit its nothing new. And I said that yes, its a good idea. And then I qualified my answer and said....."however, most people's behaviours stem from past areas in which they have been wounded. Therefore, their past impacts them in their daily life. To dismiss their past and to only an soley focus on the present is a form of deinal which perpetuates the areas of wounding that they suffer in. The author claims that past issues won't affect you if you remain living in the present and not worry about the future. Again, this is a bit of a fallacy. Let's face it: everyone has undergone pain in this life. If your actions stem out of that and you develop maladaptive ways of coping, that will carry on through your life and will impact you in this present moment. To simply live in this moment, right now, is a form of denial and will be used as such in order to not deal with those areas. However, that pain in the past will still impact you.

On a further note, if you live only for this moement right here and right now, what about dreams? and goals? and hopes? Those are life giving things. If we live in this moment and only this moment, then we deny ourselves the pleasure of those things. Those dreams and goals and hopes for the future are often what keep us going when we come up against it hard. If we live only for the moment that we are presently in, we give up a large source of pleasure in our lives for there is no point to dreaming.

The third portion of this is: i get very frustrated when i see a book like this written by someone, perhaps with good intentions, perhpas not, who makes a ton of money selling a fad like this without actually thinking through what he is saying. There are far too many hurting people these days who are looking for something to ease the pain. Books such as these, often times written by unqualified people are being entirely unethical. Many people don't take the time to think these things through and instead jump on the bandwagon for it seems an easy answer to their pain and the authors who perpetuate such books, as far as I am concerned behave in an unethical manner, for they are giving an supposed quick fix to someone's pain without giving full thought to the impact that it may have. Knowledge in the hands of the wrong people can be a dangerous thing. People are craving help and will get it in the form of self help books and it is books such as these that in my humble opinion have the potential to do much much damage to the hurting soul.

thanks for reading my rant