If You Had to Choose Just One…
Simultaneously a gentle & brutal, easy & mind-boggling read. Few books encapsulate such profound ideas with such brevity… Definitely a case of “hot ice and wondrous strange snow”
In all corners of life, there’s the tired old trope of being stuck on a desert island and having to pick one thing – be it tool or food item or album or whatever – you would want to have with you. When it comes to books about mental health, Gerald May’s Simply Sane is unequivocally the one I’d pick.
So why – amid this present age of chattering influencers and would-be gurus promising to overhaul your brain and body into some kind of unstoppable productivity monster via an endless parade of tips, tricks, hacks, diets, strategies, supplement stacks, coping skills, morning routines, sleep routines, parenting skills, drugs, breathing techniques and who knows what else – would I suggest a book originally published in 1977 by a psychiatrist turned theologian which, among other things, spends a great deal of time carping on the harm done by psychotherapy as my desert island pick?
One thing that singles May’s book out to me is its prescience – he was accurately calling bullshit on some very core notions of the above noise from 50 years ago. Chief among these is the central tenet shot through so much self-help content these days: you are some variant of deficient or broken or just plain not good enough and in order to be your best self – i.e. worthwhile – you desperately need to be fixed.
And even though it was far more central when he was writing the book, this idea of fixing the broken can still show up often even in well-intended therapy..
On the flipside, Simply Sane also explores and outlines a variety of foundational ideas that have shown up time and again over the ensuing 50 years of research into what drives the efficacy of various truly helpful therapies.
More importantly, however, what I find so powerful about Simply Sane and the reason it is one of the books I’m most likely to recommend to friends or clients, is the deft way it deals with and almost dances with some of the most profound contradictions of existence.Among these is his completely upending conventional definitions of sanity and insanity, arguing that our attempts to maintain a white-knuckle grip on things like rationality, predictability, control, and adherence to norms – often hallmarks of “sanity” for society – are often antithetical to genuine human experience and the very definition of insane..
People, he points out, tend to expend vast amounts of energy trying to manage every aspect of their lives, from their emotions to their relationships to their external circumstances. This rigidity begets anxiety, exhaustion, and a sense of disconnection from life, from others and from the very flow of nature.
Think about it. We have more access to knowledge and guidance on how to manage our health and wellness than ever before. Like I said, we’ve got endless tips, tricks, hacks, diets, strategies, supplement stacks, coping skills, morning routines, sleep routines, parenting skills, drugs, breathing techniques and who knows what else. Do you feel any better? I don’t.
What if, instead of clinging to our desperate, constant and downright insane need to control everything in our lives, we could learn to surrender to its unfolding? What might that feel like? Would that feel like giving up?
Wait, that can’t be right…
But what if giving up was not such a bad thing? What if it was actually one of the most profound steps we could take toward embracing the full depth of our one wild and beautiful life with openness and trust?
What then?
