I have read a lot of self help books. My aim in reading each was to learn more about myself. But, as one of my teachers told me quite angrily before, “stop trying to project yourself into everything you read. Stop trying to ask, ‘what does this say about me,’ stop trying to infuse secondary, tertiary meanings onto everything. Read to read. Listen to music to listen to music. Go for a walk to go for a walk.”

Obviously, his advice went horribly in vain. Instead of heeding his caveat, I chose instead to reread a fuckton of self-help labeled books aiming to see if my intentions were messed up, and I tried to correct my intentions or have the right ones. I put myself in a bubble, like Sandy from Spongebob, trying to fix my intentions and alleviate myself of some mysterious fault; continuing the strange Spongebob thing, I was in a bubble insulated from reality at larger, and running on a treadmill from one book to the next, and back, rotating between people whose books or knowledge I had hoped would provide some panacea for my emotions or motivations.

Ultimately, I was running on this treadmill of anxiety not to go anywhere, but because it felt good to feel like I was going somewhere. The propensity, the sheer energy to move all this time, to expend all my energy running, came partly from my ADHD meds I’ve been taking, and the other sheer impetus came from insecurity that I was a bad person; having made different choices than other people and not seeing anyone around me commit to the same path I was on, a part of me was desperate for validation that I was doing the right thing, that I was OK being on this path.

In retrospect, the only one to guide me is myself; in a situation where no one else shares one’s metrics, I find that one becomes most influential, yet least stable; I often forget I am a person, and as people, our identities are interdependent on others and by our own actions. I’m reminded of the novel Ender’s Game, the titular children’s book that shows just how awful adults are at making children’s reading lists (usually about genocide as the theme; middle school teacher love genocide. Maybe the kids are going through a phase because of puberty, or maybe they’re fucking reading the Diary of Anne Frank, Schindler’s List, and Ender’s Game. in America, the lessons of the Weimar Republic are conflated as lessons for 13 year olds. Learn about the Holocaust in the morning, play lacrosse in the evening, google “Jennifer Lawrence boobs” at night; middle school fucking sucks).

The book notes how solitude can lead to self-reliance within oneself, notably in that instance Ender, but the fear and respect that his peers see him as ultimately does not clash in that book with the way he sees himself, with his own goals and ends. his identity as a leader was cultivated deliberately by others and fostered—he learned independence and self-sustenance through the pain of loneliness, of no one else sharing his values and pursuits. I find that in today’s day and age, everyone wants to be either be a leader or wants their kids to be in ‘leadership setting camps,” as if everyone could be a leader. It feels good to be ahead of the curve, the motivation makes sense, but they fail to be aware that leadership is not something everyone should want, since such an identity comes from so much self-doubt and internal pain, but most importantly, from loneliness, which is needed for the independent identity which conveys that sort of respect.

The problem is that I am not as badass nor as determined as Ender, and loneliness physically hurts me, and ironically fuels the drive to read more and learn more about myself to abet my self-perceived emotional ‘problems’ (loneliness is not bad, but it is if one thinks it should be eradicated). The problem with my actions is that in being insecure about my identity and not having conviction, I wanted to go to a book written by another person, and read what others told me as as learning about myself. This is stupid and obviously bullshit.

I was simply asking everyone but myself, every other, from Eckharte Tolle to Mark Manson and my Buddhism textbook, to figure out something about myself. What everyone told me I should be was different, and all I did was get hella depressed, eat a lot of ice cream, play a lot of video games, and try harder. In terms of efficiency, efficacy, and respectfulness, 0’s on every front. All my actions did was make me depressed and more insecure. My original insecurity was feeling inadequate because I treated a girl I cared about like she didn’t matter to me when she did, and tried to cover it up by acting like someone I wasn’t. Instead of moving on though, all I did was try to cover up the emotions coming from my actions by thinking I could abet disappointment and guilt with an insightful passage to tell me what I did wrong, or whatever.

The bottom line isn’t that there is a bottom line; that was my mistake first. Ultimately, me trying to learn about myself and my faults through what others tell me about myself, is fake and spurious, and I was making myself extremely self-absorbed, unhappy, and slightly fat from eating so much vanilla ice cream to compensate (binge eat it from Trader Joe’s! It is delicious). I thought I could listen to my Buddhism professor, or Mark Manson, or some other reputable author to tell me who I am and what my mistakes are. But I was incognizant of my own interpretation, and my own decision to decide what to do. I got a lot of advice from others about myself, and every failure made me try harder, because I was being ignorant of the fact that I was turning to others and not to myself to tell me who I am; of course I would be depressed, of course I would feel like shit and be extremely needy. That is the dumbest idea ever; I did it for maybe a month and a half.

Other people have proven me wrong all the time. But my inability to accept that wrongness is what drove me to seek security from others; and the opposite fact is also true; when I am the one who proves myself wrong, I was most OK with myself. I am the only one culpable for treating myself and others like shit. That isn’t so bad. Ultimately, the consequences caught up to me. And that is fine too. I want to say I felt like Sisyphus climbing up a wheel, but really, it felt good, it felt like I was making progress; the worst sort of feeling is when one feels like they are losing progress.

I was acting like a chicken with its head cut off, and it was from going to everyone about myself but me. I was, and probably still am, afraid of loneliness; but what if I am wrong? Then I am the only one who is wrong, and I don’t want that exposure to being wrong, I want to blame it on the theory instead-i want to say Eckharte Tolle was wrong, the Power of Now is stupid! Buddhism is wrong! Nah, because this: everyone can see the responsibility that I am avoiding is on me, whether I like it or not. I was also extremely arrogant for choosing all that energy and effort and self-pain instead of a bit of admittance, a bit of sole exposure as making mistakes like any human being. Wrongness is not worth avoiding a little pain from truthfulness and responsibility, which takes a lot of energy to avoid.

It was stupid. There’s nothing to be wrong about.

Jeffery