Liff Changes Everything – Well, Some Things, Anyway

Have you discovered the meaning of liff?

According to Douglas Adams, a liff is ‘A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover.  For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words: “This book will change your life”.’

In fairness, some books can change the course of your life, or at least nudge it in one direction or another.  The trouble is that the books which you most need in order to change your thinking, are not necessarily the ones which have the most sudden and dramatic impact.

I have read plenty of wise, thoughtful, and beautiful books that told me exactly what I needed to learn.  Unfortunately, I either ignored them, misunderstood them, or latched onto an over-simplistic interpretation of what the author said in the first paragraph and refused to believe anything he/she said to qualify it later on.  Alternatively, if the book was both enjoyable to read and easy to understand, I read it avidly, wept at its beauty as I read, and then forgot it.  Good books usually need numerous re-readings before I actually take in what they are trying to teach me.

Equally, I have read bad, illogical, and morally vacuous books that have cast me into depressions that lasted years at a time, even if I only read one chapter before putting them down.  I could see that the authors’ arguments made no sense, but if they played into my deepest fears, I didn’t quite dare to disbelieve them.  However, as they were only confirming what I had suspected all along, I can hardly say that they changed me.

The one book which changed my life the most quickly, profoundly, and lastingly, was one I hadn’t intended for myself at all.

When I saw The Little Book Of Internet Dating in a charity shop, I bought it in case any of my friends might find it helpful.  After all, several of them had been complaining about the difficulty of finding a girlfriend or boyfriend.  However, as none of them seemed interested, I wondered whether to try it myself.

I told myself not to be silly.  I didn’t need a partner the way my friends did.  I would only be looking for one in the hope that I would be happier in a relationship than single, and wanting happiness was shallow and selfish.  I could easily stay single and live in lodgings in shared houses my whole life, until I got old and frail and went into a nursing home, where I wouldn’t have any visitors, but at least wouldn’t miss my home because I hadn’t had a proper home anyway.

Still, I chose a dating website and set up a profile with a friend’s help.  After exchanging emails with several people who sounded quite likeable, and a few who just seemed suspiciously evasive, I had an email from one man who seemed to have a similar sense of humour to mine.  After emailing longer and longer letters to each other about everything from our own lives to centaur physiology and how the Trojan hero Aeneas invented the pizza, and talking on the phone, we decided to meet.

Some of my friends were alarmed: ‘Online dating?  How do you know he’s not a weirdo?’

To which I replied: ‘How do I know anyone I meet in a café or a pub, or in church, isn’t a weirdo?  At least this way I don’t need to tell him where I live until I’m sure I can trust him.  But if he was a psychopathic rapist and serial killer, I just think he’d invent a more glamorous persona than a middle-aged engineer and church organist who likes dragons and collects old computers.’

On the train to meet my online friend, I worried about whether I would even recognise him.  I’m not good at facial recognition at the best of times, as I have Asperger’s syndrome and often forget to make eye contact, and we had spent much more time writing or talking on the phone than looking at each other’s photographs.  But when I saw him standing on the railway platform, I not only knew who he was, but I knew that I trusted him.  It felt as though we had known each other all our lives, and it seemed perfectly natural to go up to him and hug him.

As it was raining, we went to visit Wookey Hole Caves – which were much more tackily touristy than I remembered from my childhood – played Victorian arcade games, and had a ridiculously good time.  By the end of the day, I was ready to say, ‘I love you.’  Within nine months of our first email, we were engaged.  Within twenty months, we were married, and have been very happy together ever since.  Admittedly, this has only been sixteen months of marriage, but it’s a good start.

Being in a relationship changed all my assumptions.  When I was single, I could deal with depression by putting on the mask of a sane, balanced person while working as a carer.  I would then scream all my way home, pick up the phone and be depressed at my friends and family until they couldn’t stand it and hung up, or beat myself up and taunt myself to commit suicide until my landlady told me to be quiet or go out for a walk.

I could see, though, that it wasn’t fair to get married if I was going to do that to the person I loved.  It was all very well to tell myself that happiness was not the goal of life, but pointlessly making myself miserable was wrong if it was going to hurt my partner.  Love doesn’t solve your problems, but it does give you a reason to try to overcome them, which is what I have been doing since then.

The Book, meanwhile, is long gone to another charity shop.  I hope it’s changing someone else’s life.