It must have been some time around 1970 that I lost my faith in self-help books. Of course, the world was a very different place then, and the self-help publishing racket industry was in its infancy. Like so many others, I read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which, by the time I came to it, was already 30 years old. I’m not absolutely sure what I was hoping to find in the book, but, whatever it was, I didn’t find it. I think I need to take full responsibility for that, because my expectations were unrealistic. I never really internalized the ‘self’ part of ‘self-help’; the idea that I had to be the change I wished to see sounded too much like hard work.

In the decades since then, I have grown increasingly scornful of self-help literature. The idea that I can turn my entire life around just by reading a 300-page book seems ridiculous. It cannot possibly be that easy, can it? So, when I stumbled across an article in Sunday’s paper entitled The 20 bestselling self-help books of all time — and what I learnt from them, I expected to react with derisory laughter. In fact, I said to myself: ‘Great! I can turn my life around just by reading 2000 words, rather than ploughing through 20 books.’

Of course, my takeaway from this fast-food experience was about as nourishing as such takeaways usually are. However, one instruction, the final message of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, struck me, and I have been chewing it over today. Covey writes: ‘Live life in crescendo’. He coined this lesson to convey the message that ‘the most important work you will ever do is always ahead of you… Retirement is a false concept.’ I’ve been trying to decide, over the last few hours, whether that is the most uplifting, or the most depressing, thing I have read so far this year.

Part of me argues that the reward for decades of climbing the mountain of everyday life has to be the right to enjoy sitting on the summit and admiring the view. At the same time, I find myself feeling some grudging admiration for the concept of perpetual purposefulness.

You must admit that a constant crescendo is relentlessly exhausting, not least because it requires you to constantly find new challenges. If these are to motivate you, they surely have to mean more to you than the ones you are currently facing, or have just successfully met. It seems to me that there must come a point where you have exhausted all the things you care most passionately about. Do you then have to choose to devote your energies to something that is less important to you?

Take brewing beer, for example, or baking bread. Don’t get me wrong: I fully realise that I could study either of these crafts for a complete lifetime and still have things to learn. At the same time, the three or four breads and two beers that I now make are ones that give me a huge amount of pleasure. I could search for the next 20 years and not necessarily find flavours I enjoy as much, and I’d rather spend those two decades eating bread that I absolutely know I enjoy, if it’s all the same to you.

However, when I think about my blog, I realise there may be another way in which I can live my life in crescendo, without constantly seeking out new challenges. As I have mentioned before, when I started writing, I was full of first impressions of Portugal, exhilaration at spending time with Tslil, Micha’el and Tao, and excitement at this new adventure of house purchase in another country.

As the months passed, and especially over the past 9 months, I have had to rely more and more on other topics, but I have, by and large, felt that I had something to say. Some of these posts are the extended verbalizing of ideas that I have been nurturing for a long time; most of them are topics close to my heart.

However, I appear by now to have got off my chest most of what has been bothering me, and, every Saturday night, the next couple of days loom up with an ominous inevitability. Perhaps this blog presents me with the challenge of writing about stuff that doesn’t really mean that much to me, while being as effortlessly witty and thought-provoking as I have been about the topics that are closer to my heart. That’s a kind of constant crescendo I might be able to take on.

Reading back over those 780 words, I see that I haven’t really managed it, so let’s talk about something else. I have been studiously avoiding the elephant in the room, but this coming week promises to be a big one for Bernice and myself. Wednesday week will mark ten days after our second vaccination, and we will then be free as a bird, and able to enjoy going out for a meal….except there are no restaurants open, going to the theatre….which is, of course, locked down, and generally exchanging not being allowed to go almost anywhere for not having anywhere to go.

Add to this the imponderables. Our chances of being infected are (possibly) negligible, but nobody knows whether we can still infect others. How long will our immunity last? Will our Pfizer vaccine prove effective against the next mutations coming down the pipe?

Of course, there are really only two things we want to do, and two places we want to be, and the big questions are whether, when and how we will be able to get to Portugal, or, for that matter, Zichron Yaakov.  Second things first. Our current lockdown is due to end on Thursday, but will almost certainly be extended for two weeks (as the Health Ministry recommends) or one week (as the Health Ministry may have been aiming for when they proposed a two-week extension).

When we do come out of lockdown, Bernice and I should be able to travel to Zichron to see Esther and Maayan, which will be wonderful. Portugal, however, presents a whole new set of question marks. Will travel insurance be prohibitively expensive? Will Portugal accept us? (Currently, the answer appears to be yes.) Are we prepared to fly with a layover, and, if so, which European airports look like being the least risky and best organized? Will we need to go into isolation in Portugal? When we return to Israel, will we need to go into isolation here, and, if so, will that be at home (not a problem) or will Israel have reinstated corona hostels (which, by all accounts, are a fairly unattractive prospect, not least because you are living out of a suitcase}.

Bernice and I are talking about this more seriously all the time. Sometimes we take the line that it’s all a lottery, and nobody can predict what can happen in the month we are away, so we should stop over-thinking it and just go. At other times we question whether our resilience, and ability to roll with the punches, are perhaps just a tad rustier than they were 30 years ago.

And, of course, with every passing month Tao grows and develops and becomes more and more his own person. We know how blessed we are to be able to chat with him, to see him and interact with him, every week; I am constantly thinking back to our parents, who visited us once a year for two weeks when our kids were young, and especially of Bernice’s parents, whose two daughters were raising all six of their grandchildren in Israel. Audio cassettes and air letters were definitely not even Zoom and WhatsApp video calls.

OK, people. Now I’m getting plain maudlin. I know full well that many of you are going through exactly the same as we are – even some of you who live just a short drive from your grandchildren. There is nothing special about the situation we find ourselves in, but I’m afraid this is not one of those occasions when misery loves company.

On the whole I think I’d better stop now, and start trying to find something uplifting, or at least flippant, to chew over next week.

No videos this week, I’m afraid, but I can give you a glimpse of Tao practising his driving skills in the family’s new acquisition, a pickup truck which will doubtless be put to very good use on the land.