Improve your lousy life

I’ll ADMIT it -- I need help. I need guidance during those moments when my 4-year-old locks herself in the laundry room. I need to commiserate about the ups and downs of a long domestic partnership and the stresses of the convulsing modern workplace. Sometimes my need isn’t that specific -- I am mortal, and that isn’t something I can face alone.

The one currently on my nightstand, “The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types,” must be one of the most mocked self-help books of all-time. It quotes Jonathan Swift, Rumi, the Talmud and Carl Jung -- all in the random span of three pages. I say, how admirably democratic! By laying out the sources of their insight, self-help authors help me understand the mash-up of mythologies that inform my nondenominational existence.

I love self-help books for their commitment to the beautifully ridiculous American idea that each of us can transcend our lousy circumstances. I love the faith their authors put in reading itself as a transformative process. Fingering through the chapters of my Enneagram tome, I imagine how my daily grind might change if I were to apply the advice offered Personality Type Seven (the Enthusiast). Thumbing through Dr. Andrew Weil, I ponder the effect a Mediterranean diet might have on my cholesterol levels. Perusing a parenting volume, I dream of a time when I’ll finally learn how to “cut in on the Whining Dance.”

The key to enjoying these books is admitting that you will never truly adhere to them. But like Fox Mulder on “The X-Files,” I want to believe, even though I love the secular world I live in. The self-help library gives me a way to live with that contradiction.

-- Ann Powers