Helping Yourself

I don't set much store by what might be termed 'self help' books. But there are honourable exceptions to all my rules, and John Cleese & Robyn Skinner's Life And How To Survive It was until recently the chief of these, if not the only, in this regard. Having recently discovered Families And How To Survive Them in my friendly neighbourhood library (this being Cleese and Skinner's precursor to the Life book) I am now happy to report that the number of honourable exceptions has now doubled.

I already had an inkling of some of the key ideas I would encounter reading Families but I was refreshingly challenged on a first reading by the thought-world unfolded. That sense of ideas getting under the skin seems to me key to any possibility of change in the individual. Can we really change for the better? I think it's possible, but I suspect such change is slow and painful - entirely the opposite of any quick fix we might be offered. 

I'm intending to read Families again, having raced through the first time. But this will be after a suitable period of assimilation. Enough tender spots were bruised the first time through to suggest I need to relax into the truths I recognised. I think I'm mentally healthier than I used to be - but not by much, and I'm not exactly starting from a place high on the slopes. Still, at one time I couldn't have typed that sentence and meant it. Now it's just old news.