The Crossword crossroad

I love libraries, or any place which allows me a space to just get lost in a wealth of stories. There is a certain charm to endless options and being able to pick something up and sit with it for a while. When I was younger, some of my favourite spots were the school library, my book cabinet on the first floor of my house, and The British library I had access to thanks to my elder sister’s generosity. I remember The British Library feeling so rich and grand to me, and that was of course, accentuated by the presence of a bean bag chair and a video games section which was the coolest thing a kid growing up in the 2000s could envision.

Bookstores are a different ball game altogether. You need to make a choice, and you need to make it quick. It feels urgent in my head, at least, because I cannot bear the idea of the bookstore staff staring at me (even if they are not). You get it though, don’t you?  The unsaid pressure that builds while you quickly check reviews online, calculate if the book price is going to mean one less fancy restaurant meal, and then pick something up and purchase it, because leaving empty handed is the most embarrassing thing you could do. 

Well, one fine day, I sat down in a cafe near my home, which had an inbuilt Crossword store. So while I gave my coffee order, I allowed myself some time to ignore the pressure (I had paid for my coffee so a purchase was already made) and explore the books. Here, I found myself at a crossroad - do I step into the Mystery section that I usually gravitate toward, or into a territory I rarely explored. That territory was :

The top 30 non fiction section

Now, there were 6 key categories* of books here with some examples:

Books on Money making: Psychology of money, Rich dad Poor dad, 5 types of wealth, The compound effect, Coffee can investing

Books on Leadership: Start with why, How to talk to anyone, Attitude is everything, Surrounded by idiots

Books by/about those who made it BIG: SRK, MS Dhoni, Ratan Tata

Books on Habit creation/productivity: Atomic habits, Do it today, Kaizen, The 5 am club

Books on finding your Purpose and living a stress free, fulfilled life: Ikigai, Life’s amazing secrets, 12 rules of life, Courage to be disliked, Live while you’re alive, Do epic shit

Books on building your Career: Build an epic career

*Note that these categories can have some overlap.

My first instinct on hitting this section? Wanting to puke. 

There is something about a self-help section that immediately sends my anxiety into overdrive. That somehow I have been falling short.

I am not:

A celebrity with millions of fans (or money)

A disciplined person with habits that would make James Clear stare in awe

Even close to defining my life purpose in a way that checks the boxes of ‘what I love, what can make money, what I am good at, what my dog would want me to do all day’ (I am guessing that’s the last one). 

A leader or even an influencer big enough to claim leading millions of followers

And on the stress free part, my almost puking right in front of the Crossword manager speaks for itself.

Though, if you think about it, Isn’t that the point of self help? You feel like crap until you find the solution that makes it all better?

Now before you come at me, I am not, in any way, discrediting these books. Some of the books are genuinely helpful - I personally liked Atomic habits and Start with why. I agree mostly with the philosophy of the authors in both cases and hence can agree to the frameworks and ideas they talk about. 

That is the thing - so many of the ‘rules’ of the books or even general advice in this genre is extremely personal. There is a specific lens through which the creator views the world, a specific reality that exists for them and the world they inhabit. And while human behaviour or emotions can be uniform across the globe - economics, opportunities and situations are not. So the idea of rules irks me, because in a world as complicated as ours, there cannot be uniform principles of success for all. No book can give you the answer to all your problems and any book claiming that has to have a delusional yet very successful person at the centre because they believe ‘If it worked for me, it can work for you’ which is a dangerous territory to tread. We all experience the world in different ways based on our circumstance and ideology. The idea of these books is to expand your world view and consider other possibilities, not blindly follow it or believe it ‘because it worked for ABC who is highly successful and of course, all successful people are right’ or worse, ‘I like ABC-who-is-very-successful and therefore whatever he has to say about any topic is the right opinion, even if it does not pertain to his area of success. If I can embody this person’s life philosophy, maybe I can become him’.

That being said, I have empathy for the authors because I understand that all variations or caveats cannot possibly be addressed in one book, hence a lot of these books, if written intelligently, give broad principles and allow you to fill in the blanks based on your own situation. The downside to that is that it can veer into the territory of the overly simplistic or obvious, which makes for a frustrating experience where you just skim the headers of the pages and essentially know the entire book in a matter of 10 minutes (Looking at you - The subtle art of not giving a f*ck). So their selling point will be simple, digestible advice with a killer hook or cover that immediately grabs your attention, that you can consume at the airport before you even board the flight you bought it for.

Oh, but the absolute worst is if a book presents the problem it addresses like a game to be won. 

Can’t make friends? Can’t portray yourself as important and smart?

Use these tricks.

Here is where a lot of the ‘internet self- help’ resides. Accounts on social media just spouting how to hack the system, or manipulate people to get what you want. The philosophy is that life itself is a game, people are just beings in your way you need to navigate to win. It’s the lowest of the low way to grab attention. It just brings to light that we really are struggling, and that having any ethics or or basic humanity itself is a baggage that needs to be rid of to move forward. 

The help in the self-help is not aimed at improving yourself, it is how to give the appearance of being an improved version of you. After all, the best version of you is not you at all. 

All this being said, I cannot say I do not subscribe to any self- help podcasts or content. With the overload of content today, it is just hard to find something specific that really applies to you and is not manufactured, and often you have to remind yourself to consume everything with a grain of salt because escape is impossible.

Overall, I find the singularity of the idea to often be a limiting factor in my enjoyment of the contents of the book. There are rarely alternate perspectives or the journey to the discovery of whatever philosophy is core to the book. Fiction, in that way, is a far more interesting medium because you can often dissect and explore the themes of a book through the lens of multiple characters which I find to be a far more realistic portrayal of the complexities any topic worthy of talking requires. My own judgement of whether killing civilians of the enemy camp is justified to end the war right now or whether compassion is extended to people on your enemies is far better explored in stories like The Hunger games (sorry, that’s top of mind considering the release of Sunrise on the Reaping, the review for which will soon be out) and The Enemy. I find it easier to accept myself and still work on improving myself when I watch a character at their absolute lowest finding a way to do just that. Storytelling really does have the power to change a person’s perspective in a far more nuanced and concrete way than a set of rules and principles does.

The truth is, there are always nuggets of wisdom in every bestseller. The process of finding that little core that would really stick, unfortunately, I find to be far more painful than I would want. 

Perhaps, the next time I visit Crossword, I can find it in myself to pick up a scandalous Bollywood celebrity tell-all to retrain my Pavlovian reflexes from anxiety to guilty excitement. At least it would be a guaranteed fun to read.