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Change One Thing by Sue Hadfield (view source)
Revision as of 16:19, 29 November 2014
, 16:19, 29 November 2014no edit summary
On the face of it the principle is simple: just change one thing for a better life. Of course it's not that simple. Working on the basis that the longest journey starts with a single step Sue Hadfield looks at the disillusionment which is a by-product of our work-driven life and guides us towards the steps we'll need to take to pull ourselves out of what's not so much a rut as a pit of despair on occasions. Changing one thing is just the beginning, but as she points out, it can be what's needed to kick-start the whole process - to a better way of our current life or a whole new life.
I've seldom been on quite such a roller-coaster with a book: it began by annoying me, then I hit a patch which I found absolutely inspirational and next threw the book at the wall when I found some serious mauling of statistics. The annoyance came when I spotted full pages given over to a single quote, speech bubbles quoting something which is in the text next to the bubble and full page pictures. ''Padding'', I thought - and this is a slim book to start with. Still, even very slim books can have something to say.
Hadfield works hard to show that age is no barrier to achieving what you want to achieve - and it shows. I now know that I'm past the age at which I can expect to enjoy good health and only slightly reassured by the lists of people ''who have succeeded late in life''. There are quite a few who have achieved great things in their seventies and beyond but ''Raymond Chandler was 51 when he wrote his first novel...'' or Marina Lewycka who did the same thing at 58? They're sprightly young things - but Hadfield has subtly told me that I'm ''old''. And I wasn't pleased about it.