Vicissitudes of Life

Vicissitudes of Life is a book of twelve short reflections, written in the first person, about the ups and downs of a life — and what a mind can make of them. It is the most openly autobiographical of the Mere Reflections books: the author writes from the collapse years of Zimbabwe's hyperinflation, when work, money, and family order all gave way at once, and from what came after — the decision, made at rock bottom, to become an author.

The reflections work one theme from many sides: that fortune's swings are not in our control, but the mind that rides them is. Hitting bottom kills the fear of failure and clears the view; loss reveals that what felt like everything was replaceable, and what remains — time, knowledge, skill — was the real property. There is a motto at the book's center, "This is my life and I will live it," offered as the mature answer to circumstances that invite self-pity. The voice is plain and direct, often grateful in hindsight for the very years it describes, and the closing claim is the book's whole argument: the worst that befalls a person can turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to them.