“Telling a story, especially of another person’s life, is always fiction. It is when that story has been written for togetherness’s sake. When truth is not told, in that story, the deception in its stead will bring unity if only as a short-term distraction. A fiction tale is something that never occurred, and the more a reader to a story is distracted from reality into fantasy, their knowledge of themselves becomes less aware. A story is merely a distraction. Fiction is deception. Seeing ourselves in a character or in the author’s feelings is simply a way to not feel alone with the self’s own burdens.”
– Modern Romanticism
If to tell the truth, then tell it of the self. Understand the self. Then, tear the self apart. Tear your own image, the capturing of yourself upon photographs, into shreds. Shatter your own mirror, your current comprehension of where you reside, both of body and mind.
Self-help books are there to tell a reader that their own faults are not in a scape of loneliness. However, to come to the realization, and then the reminder of what is truthful, being that loneliness, is how any addict ignores the truth or a necessity. Insecurity is addicted to the concept of blending another with the self, without inherently comprehending it in automation. As in, we are insecure when we must be reminded that we are not alone.
All people are subject to insecurity. No one is immune. Writing this as a hypocrite, there are always the addictions, to all persons, to differing mirrors at different directions. At those directions, we believe we might see something different from ourselves, because our addiction to fleeing loneliness has kept us broken. In being broken, we want a new story. We crave comparison and also contrast from the details to our life. Soon, we begin to see if we are special, even in our sorrows. However, all those directions will lead to the same people with their pair of broken arms. They each weep, without difference.
We are all selfish, when we want to be reminded of our suffering. When that happens, we remind someone else, without knowing it, of their suffering.
To alleviate suffering, we should know truth by knowing it at the first glance and the first direction we face.
Self-help books have a market on the insecurities of others. One is not enough, through the same mindset of an addict for cigarettes. When does an addict stop with one dosage? One might think if that were the case, they were never an addict. Purchasing one self-help book is no more the difference to hoarding a collection of novels from differing authors. However, while a novel will be truthful, at least in the sense of being described as fiction, a self-help book deceives in stating that it is non-fiction. How is a self-help book non-fiction, when it does not tell the truth?
Self-help books do only two things:
- They remind a reader of their loneliness.
- They tell a reader to not feel alone.
Inevitably, the former overlaps onto the latter, becoming its dominant. That is because the addiction to self-help books is never fulfilling. No addiction is fulfilling. Addictions are merely a placeholder for a necessity. In this lack of fulfillment, being reminded of loneliness is the constant or the plural to the singular of being told the reader is not alone. That is, the reminder is what stays as the addiction being against or being the dominant to the truth of their loneliness.
As an addict ignores what it is they need, then so does a reader to self-help books. And what is needed is to tear apart the self to see the wounds, up-close. One must be able to smell the blood that perspires, the flesh that looks the most ragged. One must be able to feel their pain, and then shiver in a cold sweat. Although, anxiety has never killed. Insecurity never kills. It merely feels that way.
Being addicted to what never tells the truth for how wrong a person is, is common. This is to say that self-help books enable people.
Be miserable, if it is needed. Be depressed, if it is needed. If you must comprehend how sick you are, then do not deign yourself in running from it.
And do not run from others who are also sick in their own way, only to return another day to hear another story.
Modern Romanticism 