2023/175: How to be Human: The Manual — Ruby Wax

‘The brain is Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.’ [loc. 455]

Ruby Wax, long an advocate for mental health, enlists the assistance of neuroscientist Ash Ranpura and Buddhist monk Gelong Thubten in this examination of the impact of stress and informational overload on the human mind. Among the topics Wax examines are emotions, relationships, children, addiction and forgiveness. I found the Forgiveness chapter (where Wax forgives her parents, who fled Europe in the 1940s, for her rough childhood: 'Who knows who they would have been if they hadn’t had to run for their lives? The past was not their fault.') really chimed with me: I've been thinking about my parents as they might be now, as I might relate to them if we could meet as adults and equals.

Wax's sense of humour is never too far away, but she's also very honest and open about her own mental health issues. Her conversations with Ash and Thubten, which are included at the end of each chapter, give solid neurological explanations of some behaviour patterns, as well as ways in which to approach and resolve them. (I found Thubten very likeable and quietly humorous: I didn't get as much sense of Ash as a person.) There's a lot of mindfulness in this book, including a whole chapter of exercises -- varied enough that many are new to me.

I found this an enjoyable and thought-provoking read, with lots of brain-snagging ideas: the mind is bigger than its emotions; forgiveness is about releasing ourselves from resentment, rather than letting someone 'get away with' something; we can't deal with abundance ('more people die of overeating than of starvation'), hence addictions; emotional pain activates the same centres in the brain as physical pain. There's a recurrent theme of kindness and compassion, to ourselves as well as to others: I am beginning to think that kindness is more important, personally and globally, than love. And there's a theme, too, of attention: to ourselves, to our bodies, to one thing rather than the plethora of content that's suddenly (in evolutionary terms) available to us via the internet.

I'm inclined to read Wax's other books about mental health issues: luckily there's at least one in the TBR!

Fulfils the ‘By a comedian’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

Fulfils the ‘How To’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.