Banishing daily life

Have you ever read an "inspirational talk" that wasn't trite, clichéd and misleading? Occasionally, the content sounds like it might be useful, largely because it's personal and strives to change lives. But the content seldom survives more than the briefest scrutiny. Why?

My guess is that most of these authors are rich and accomplished with time on their hands to write best-selling self-help books. At first the information feels sensible because the delivery is slick and articulate. But what they actually say is rubbish.

We're told to tune into our intuition: "Allow your own inner light to guide you."

Can you hear your inner voice through that cacophony? I can. I hear a wish to sleep on a park bench for the day, occasionally lifting an eye to watch the newly hatched ducklings paddling in the lake. I'd eat chocolate and drink red wine for my lunch.

If I pay even more attention, I'd never set my alarm again. I'd wake to the natural rhythms of my body clock. Both Alice Munro and Eleanor Catton would be on the bookshelf and no longer on the unread pile next to my bed. The ho-hum of daily life would be a thing of the past.

The easy advice offered is almost offensively impractical. And, it's often contradictory.

And then there is Arianna Huffington who says, "It is incredibly important that while you go out and change the world, you take care of yourself."

Her advice: Sleep for eight hours a night, disconnect from the world occasionally and connect with your spiritual world.

Fine advice yes. But if you have a job and a husband, eight hours of sleep a night is unlikely. Disconnecting. That's a laugh.

Probably the best advice ever given was by the writer David Foster Wallace to graduates at a US university.

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out," he said that day in 2005.

Wallace committed suicide in 2008.