Almost always, I come across it when I am not looking - and in the most unlikely of places. The latest did not disappoint on both those scores: at a child's third birthday party, in his home in London's East End.
For a variety of reasons, the East End is one of my favourite parts of the city. It is gritty, full of characters and colour. It used to be quite notorious - it's where the Kray twins and other well-known gangsters grew up, survived and thrived. It has undergone extensive reputation rehabilitation, thanks to its close proximity to the centre of London, but also to the Olympics that will be held in Stratford later this year.
Whenever I'm in other people's houses, I like to look at the books on their bookshelves. You can tell an awful lot about people from the kinds of books they choose to read. The mother of the birthday boy happens to be a schoolteacher, and a very good one, by all independent accounts.
Her book that sparked my interest wasn't on the heavily laden bookshelves in her lounge. It was just lying there, all on its own on a table, near all the goodies she had lovingly prepared. The title fairly leapt out at me: The Call of DIY, A Toolkit of Practical Wisdom by Benjamin Mee. After a skim read of the first few chapters, the thought occurred that it should have been called it Zen And The Art Of DIY, but that would have been predictable, a bit twee really. And there's nothing twee about Mee.
Mee is a master, not just of his craft, but also of humour and the magical, medicinal powers of laughter. He used to write popular "To DIY For" columns in another favourite reading place of mine: The Guardian Weekend magazine.
And in 2006, Mee bought (or rather persuaded his mother to buy, so he could have fun running and living in it) a zoo - Dartmoor Wildlife Park. He did so, not just because of the park's exquisite setting, he said, but because all the animals in it were going to be shot if a buyer wasn't found.
Among the menagerie Mee took responsibility for were "five Siberian tigers, three African lions, nine wolves, three big brown European bears, two pumas, a lynx, four Asian short-clawed otters, two flamingos, quite a lot of owls, and a Brazilian tapir called Ronnie".
The story of how Mee became a zoo director has been made into a Hollywood movie that was released on circuit in the UK this year. Unfortunately the zoo still "(struggles) against extinction - just like the endangered species he cares for", as one writer put it.
Yet Mee always manages to find something to laugh about in the saddest of places. After the death of his beloved wife, Katherine, from a brain tumour, he wrote an article in 2010 for The Guardian, that was as humorous as it was heartrending. He posed the question: "Why is grief such an aphrodisiac?", and described how women's "sympathy genes went into overdrive", making him "the epicentre of a gaggle of empathetic eyes and jutting, proffered breasts".
However, women with a thing for widowers are a whole 'nother story, and not what this column is supposed to be about. The subject is DIY as "not just about improving your home; it is also about improving your life".
Certainly, there's a wealth of evidence on the mental benefits of paid work: it is shown to build confidence and self-esteem. It fosters responsibility, discipline and teamwork.
Mee believes DIY work is also mentally helpful - in ways one might not first expect: in the book's introduction, he says DIY is "an itch you can never fully scratch", a vehicle for self-improvement that confronts you early on with "your fundamental laziness, petulance, and stupidity". However, Mee says it's perfectly natural to want to improve your surroundings - if only because, from a solidly practical evolutionary viewpoint, it will "enhance your survival and reproduction prospects".
That makes getting the basics right important. "The building blocks of DIY are not just the physical materials (and tools) you'll be working with," he says, but also "a series of attitudes, gradually acquired through experience".
Successful DIY, Mee says, is "a state of mind", as much as "access to an excellent cordless drill". Sanding is "the worst part of the job", and can be a "mini life-event", for which he proffers the "best psychological strategy": "Give up all hope of ever finishing and adjust to a new life of sanding, as if preparing for a long stretch in prison."
Within this quirky little book lies a procrastinator's paradise - a wealth of wisdom, and lots of immune-boosting, endorphinrousing good laughs.
Mee may not have meant to, but he also proves the wisdom in the old Buddhist saying: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."
Marika Sboros is editor of Health News. Read her blog at blogs.businessday.co.za/marika
Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge
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