Don’t Call It A Spade
No long after the terrorists struck on 911, George Bush appeared on TV condemning the “cowardly act”. That remark had me scratching my head. I was wondering what he meant by that. Terrorists are cowards? Was George Bush brave enough to blow himself up for what he believed in? I don’t think so. The terrorists were not certainly not cowards. I think they were just insanely courageous. Fortunately, there aren’t too many people like that in this world. Certainly far fewer of them than cowards. George Bush forced the cowardly label on these extremists to calm the frightened American public. See, they’re actually cowards, so you need not be afraid of them. Look at all the tight security measures after 911 and anybody with common sense would see who is frightened of who.
I also remember that my secondary school teacher used to tell us not to be afraid of bullies. She said that bullies are all cowards. She told us they all come from broken homes, have been abused when they were children and have very low self-esteem. A flip through any self-help book will give an indication of where my teacher got her ideas from. There are probably hundreds of titles out there which dispense advice on how to deal with difficult people, how to choose the right partner, how to maintain a relationship, how to be more attractive to the opposite sex, how to boost our self-esteem and become more popular within our social circles. I’ve got a couple of friends who snapped up these titles whenever they appeared on the shelves of the bookstores. One of them is still single and dateless. The others didn’t have very happy marriages. And in spite of these books hitting the bestseller’s lists in the America, American couples are still breaking up in larger numbers than before and friendless people remain without any real friends.
There is too much clutter in the ocean of information out there. People are drowning in guru science and junk philosophies. Promote these ideas American style and you’ll find that a lot of these unsupported claims and unhealthy beliefs can turn into gospel truth for the hordes of insecure people who worship the self-help gurus. Nobody bothers to question their teachings. Do they really help?
Even when I was in secondary school, I had a gut feeling that my teacher could be wrong. That’s because very few of the bullies that I knew then were from broken homes or were ever abused by their parents. They were far more likely to be spoilt brats whose only trouble with self-esteem was having too much of it. But like George Bush, who found it more convenient to label terrorists as cowards than to admit to his own fears, my teacher wanted us to think of bullies as people with problems so we can forget that we the victims are actually the ones with the problem. A spade will not be a spade if we call it a spoon. I wonder if it works for patients with dental phobia to see their dentists as cowards.
With all that information overload hanging over me, I refer to only one source for self-help. The Buddha’s 2000-year-old teachings were spot on. Our problems stem from the fact that humans tend to pay too much attention to the cultivation of “self”. A person who has no friends should seriously consider a little humility and self-effacement. When one cares for and shows compassion for others, genuine friendships can develop. The one who concentrates on his self-esteem and self-love may draw a lot of envious attention but no genuine compasssion. With so much sound advice from the ancient world, why are the gurus still trying to reinvent the wheel? Who enlightens America?
