Cornucopia / Cynthia Dewes

Help! Help! We always need to help ourselves

If you thought the self-help craze was over after Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale and Dr. Ruth were passé, you might think again. Reading the many reviews of books about making ourselves better or hearing the constant encouragement on talk shows to do the same proves that the movement is alive and well.

There is always the physical component of this phenomenon. Dr. Oz is probably one of those experts on the high end of good advice for keeping healthy.

But then we have those suspicious diets urging us to cut out all carbohydrates or eat everything raw or eat only green foods. If they could get away with it, purveyors of such notions would no doubt be telling us not only to grow it ourselves, but also to kill and eat it on the same day.

And fitness! Aside from the sensible mandate to “keep moving” throughout life, we are told to run “X” number of miles a day, or lift weights under water, or do karate moves every morning in the parking lot at work. We are encouraged to do yoga or breathing exercises, play Old Guy softball or settle for a bowling league if we are too wimpy for that.

Of course, if health and fitness are present, can beauty be far behind? Getting healthy and fit are often the necessary evils we must endure in order to keep young and make ourselves beautiful, which, according to media advice, are the two most important goals in life. They are the great arbiters of success in our society.

Emotional health is another one of the biggies in self-help. We have experts like Dr. Phil interviewing sad people who seem to lack either smarts or common sense or both. Besides feeling sorry for them, we are embarrassed that they tell the world such stuff in public.

But then, think of Facebook and Twitter and go figure. For all I know, they too could be good for mental health, but I doubt it.

Marital and sexual counseling are popular self-help tools. Here again, folks feel free to write entire books about their inability to stay married or even to conduct happy relationships with someone, anyone, of the opposite sex.

Sometimes they are advised that participation in touchy-feely or technical demonstrations of romantic prowess can lead to happiness in a relationship.

And sometimes they come to what they consider a real insight—that by taking their time in choosing a partner carefully without engaging in sex, and staying faithful to him or her in every way thereafter, they will find fulfillment, stability and longevity. Despite the bad press about the 1950s, that’s exactly what we did then, and it worked well for many of us.

There is another, even more important, kind of balance that we need to help ourselves attain—spiritual stability. This involves looking inside ourselves to decide who we are, what we want from life and what we need to do to be that person and live that life. No whining, no artificial angst.

Spiritual wholeness may involve religion, or not. It may depend upon reception of the sacraments, prayer and the community of the faithful. Or, it may be only a private process. But, whether we know it or not, it always includes God.

God is the foundation upon which

well-being is based, and God is always present to us. If we really want to help ourselves, we need to understand that.

(Cynthia Dewes, a member of St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Greencastle, is a regular columnist for The Criterion.) †