I just finished reading Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. A book like that really helps add some perspective to ones life view. It's hard to think any of what I consider to be my personal issues/problems/mountains to climb/etc. are really as big as they seem after reading a memoir of a man who was pretty much given away by his mother to her therapist when he was a boy. And the tradeoff wasn't in his favor as he went essentially from one crazy parent to one crazy family. Much in the style of a Frank McCourt, or to a lesser extent, David Sedaris, Burroughs imbues the craziness of his life with an undeniable sense of offbeat humor that masks the actual tragedy of what's happening to him. It's only in the last 10 or so pages that it really hits you how depressing this book is.

Yet at the same time, somehwat uplifitng. As he contemplates fleeing western Massachusetts for New York City and wonders if he could ever survive there, he realizes, "Of course I can make it in New York City. There's no way New York could be crazier than my life had been at the Finches house in Northampton, Massachusetts and I survived that." And survive he does, judging by the excellent reviews of this New York Times bestseller. (Not that it that was easy, as evidinced by the sequel to this book, which was another memoir called Dry that I had previously read, and was about his struggle with alcoholism.)

I have a tendency to unconsciously feel like problems are the biggest thing in the world. And while, intellectually, I know they're not, because they are things that personally affect me, it's not entirely unrealistic to feel that way. The brain may be logical, but where do you feel your problems the strongest? In the gut, which is not so logical. But reading something like this, the perspective it offers, is a little like antacid for that gut. It calms it...for a while. Let's you think a little clearer, makes you realize: "I can handle this. Piece of cake."