A book about human nature that makes your head spin – in a good way

Vincent Deary is a therapist, and this book is the first part of a trilogy. How We Are is about human nature. Books two and three will be called How We Break and How We Mend. Three serious tomes, backed by a serious publisher. You open it thinking: this is not going to be an easy self-help book where everything is mapped out for you. It won’t be a walk in the park.

In fact, pretty much the first thing Deary does is to examine the concept of walking in a park. ‘“A walk in the park” is a synonym for ease,’ he tells us, ‘because the park knows how to walk.’ In other words, when you enter a park, you don’t have to make any decisions, because the park has already made them for you. The paths are marked out. All you have to do is follow them. You don’t have to think — or at least, you don’t have to think any more than you want to. ‘A good park anticipates our desire,’ says Deary. ‘Anticipated desire is the key to leisure.’

Strolling down the path of this leisurely thought, Deary then asks us to look away from the path. Human beings, he suggests, are themselves like parks. Driven by our desires, the evolutionary process has made us into a living concoction of beaten paths. ‘You are the record, the embodiment of life’s ceaseless desiring, written in tiny molecular hand, transcribed and translated into flesh, from dust and water.’

Wow! Peering down this conceptual mineshaft, we now get an idea of Deary’s project. He wants us to think — about life, the universe, the bits and pieces we are made from.‘Where do we start?’, he asks. Well, a long time ago, we were nothing but dust and water, and then, after a billion years, ‘a couple of buckets of water and a bag of earth became this you, here now, so blithely reading, turning pages.’