Changing

It's impossible to refute the fatalist or determinist's argument. Once it has turned out the way it has, it will feel inevitable. The sense that destiny and his natural gifts took President Obama to the White House is very strong indeed.

But the alternative narrative is much more interesting. And, now I'm two-thirds of the way through Dreams From My Father feels truer. This is a man of great natural gifts who changed himself for the better. He was a mess, like the rest of us. I suspect he's still a mess - it comes with the territory of being human. But I further suspect he's a distinctly better mess than most - a mess with a remarkable degree of control and awareness of his messiness.

I think we have the capacity to learn enough of what we need to know to improve ourselves in a psychological sense. To become healthier, as it were, mentally. It's an idea I first came across, stated in this raw and distinctly challenging manner, in John Cleese and Robin Skynner's Life, and How To Survive It - the only self-help book I've ever taken with any degree of seriousness and the only one that's ever made me laugh. (The only one I've ever leant to other people.) I remember when I first read it feeling quite a degree of anxiety as to where I ranked in the mental health stakes as I first considered whether I could accept their central idea at all. It was peculiarly freeing to find my answer to be that I ranked pretty darned low, all told.

I think I've changed a bit since then. But not much: change is possible, I think, but pretty darned hard and extremely darned gradual.