How would any of us know it was new year if the papers weren\u2019t full of articles about how to improve ourselves written by people so clueless about life that they opted for the media as a long-term career? Such guidance has been especially prevalent this year, maybe because it\u2019s a new decade or maybe because these kinds of articles are a lot easier and cheaper to produce than proper investigative journalism \u2013 who really can say? But I would like to draw everyone\u2019s attention to one article published over the weekend, about how we can all lead better lives, written by none other than British radio\u2019s own Chris Evans (as opposed to Hollywood\u2019s own Chris Evans). Because, truly, no one is better qualified to give life guidance than a man who, in 2000, at the age of 34, gave the then 18-year-old Billie Piper a silver Ferrari, even though she didn\u2019t know how to drive.<\/p>\n
Ah, but that\u2019s all very much in the past, Evans assures us, because he is now ENLIGHTENED. He proves this at some length in an article that itself seems to defy the very notion of space and time, with observations including: \u201cNewton saw his falling apple one day and declared: \u2018Look! Gravity!\u2019 That was his identity that day, he became the gravity guy. But what about the tree whence the apple fell? The tree that had defied his gravity in the first place, rising skywards, majestically, towards the stars.\u201d The headline on the article is I Have Seen the Light, but the editors could have saved themselves a few characters and just titled it, more accurately, Made Ya Think.<\/p>\n
Evans thrillingly reveals all the things he has learned with such aper\u00e7us as: \u201cEverything you really want, you already have\u201d (probably true of a man who owns one of the most expensive car collections in the country) and: \u201cWe say: \u2018I am not myself today,\u2019 but we never say: \u2018Myself is not my I today.\u2019\u201d Made ya think!<\/p>\n
On and on it goes, with Evans \u2013 who earns \u00a32m a year on Virgin Radio \u2013 counselling readers that they shouldn\u2019t \u201cseek to be enriched and find yourself enslaved\u201d and \u201cour need to go on holiday [is] completely surplus to who we really are\u201d. (Quite how this fits with Evans\u2019 instruction that in order to have a happy life one must \u201chave at least two holidays booked at all times\u201d is, alas, not explicated.)<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re thinking: \u201cSounds like my man was given some Eckhart Tolle for Christmas,\u201d you would not be far wrong. Tolle \u2013 the favoured writer for all narcissists \u2013 has indeed shaped what I guess we can call Evans\u2019 \u201cthinking\u201d. But, true to form, Evans doesn\u2019t just like Tolle \u2013 he worships him. He is, Evans says, in a line that is a million times funnier than anything that was in Zoolander 2, \u201cmy No 1 guru\u201d; Evans has read The Power of Now every year for the past two decades, a habit that has been scientifically proven (maybe) to have a more corrosive effect on the brain than long-term cocaine use. \u201cManifestation is the art of making what you want to happen happen. It is a real superpower available to us all,\u201d Evans continues, and there, I\u2019m afraid, I must manifest cutting him off.<\/p>\n