The Curse of “How To”

My survival manual – (photo by the author)

Even after you scroll past it, the How-To loop never really ends.

It was one of those brutally hot days.

I was pushing a stroller, trying to get some exercise in.

When I finally got my baby down for a nap – a small escape from the heat – I found myself scrolling through my phone.

Buried among the endless articles, two words kept catching my eye.

“How to.”

What exactly am I thinking when I click on an article titled “How to Earn K in L Days”?

Isn’t clicking that link, in some way, an admission of my own anxiety about money.

What I feel I lack, what I desperately want, the anxiety sitting deep in my chest – all of it seems to transform into the finger that clicks.

And somewhere in that thought, it hit me.

“Just 7 steps to success.”

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“Change 3 things and your life will change.”

These lines are everywhere – and yet, how often do I actually take them to heart, versus tossing them straight into the mental trash.

I’m not here to point fingers at the article itself.

I’m questioning. It’s how we meet it.

The problem is that they reduce human lives into data pointsㅡ as if we all start from the same conditions, the same starting line, the same set of abilities.

To put it bluntly: some of us start from wealth, some from poverty.

The 7 steps that worked for one person might not even get past step 1 for another.

And yet “How To” articles keep pouring out like a waterfall. Maybe it’s because we find comfort in them.

“I’m not the only one struggling.”

“Maybe these 5 things really could change my life too.”

That sliver of hope is what keeps the scroll going.

Hawk’s alert – (photo by the author)

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I Try to stay Alert for the moment that hope starts hardening into a sense of lack ㅡ

because I’ve lived through what happens when that gnawing not-enough-ness turns into nothing but endless searching, endless consuming.

So where, in the end, does “right here, right now” – a life lived as myself – actually live.

Ironically, I’m not learning that from a mountain of “How To” success stories.

I’m learning it from my daily Failures.

The self-doubt that creeps in after I catch myself crumbling over small things.

The hollow feeling at the end of a day spent racing against time, with no real sense of how the world even works.

Frustration.

Despair.

A future I can’t see.

A past I’d rather forget but still have to cut out of myself.

I know full well that none of this follows a manual – and yet I keep chasing one anyway, living inside that very Paradox.

So – what’s your Paradox?

The one that keeps you scrolling.

How long are we going to keep living like this.

ㅡ from Nina