Good news as Ruby Wax looks on the bright side of life
Always on a mission, Ruby Wax’ s latest venture saw her travel the globe in search of ‘ good news’ and hope. She tells Gabrielle Fagan what she learnt from the experience.
RUBY WAX has never been afraid to swim against the tide, finding fame as a comedian and showcasing her sharp one- liners and sarcastic quips on 90s TV series like Ruby Wax Meets.
She’s been open about her struggles with depression, and in more recent years has become an acclaimed campaigner for mental health awareness.
Even so, her latest cause – trying to persuade us that there is some ‘‘ good news’’ and hope to be found, at a time when the world seems beset with gloom and fear – seems a challenge.
“I know what you’re thinking, is it some kind of macabre joke? Has she been in a coma? How can Ruby Wax write a book about good news when the world is facing the worst disaster since the plague?” says Wax, whose book is chirpily titled And Now For The Good News… To The Future With Love.
It’s the result of three years of research by Wax, 67, who visited a huge array of organisations, businesses and communities trying to work in different, kinder ways and promote more people and planet- friendly attitudes.
The pandemic has actually made the book all too timely, she believes, because “we need hope so that we can overcome the fear and the bad news agenda that is besetting us all the time and makes us so stressed. We need to know even more that there are positive things out there,” says Wax, “and what’s possible if we look at the world differently.
“Even making tiny changes can add up and promote change. My book offers a directory of possibilities for people.”
Her quest for “green shoots of hope” took her all over the world. “I figured there must be innovators that are creating a new paradise, and I’m going to find them.”
In Finland, she visited progressive schools where empathy and wellbeing are taught. She was particularly impressed by outdoor clothing company Patagonia, based in California, where there’s an on- site creche for employees’ children: “I’d work there tomorrow – there’s such an air of joy and you can hear the children laughing and people work harder as a result.”
While she feared she’d be “out of my mind with anxiety” joining volunteers at a refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos, the opposite happened.
“Talk about happy, you’re facing people who really need you and the minute you turn on that kindness and compassion thing, your whole body feels good, and people return that goodness,” she confides. “I did all these things because I needed to walk the walk, to really see people who are living and working in different ways and those who are helping others.”
Her most emotional moment came at a school in Hertfordshire, where children, many from disadvantaged backgrounds, learn about emotions as well as academic topics. “They practise mindfulness and how deal with issues like bullying in a thoughtful way. At the end of my visit, they gave me a card and 600 of them sang to me. I don’t cry, but that brought me to my knees in tears,” she recalls.
It’s a far cry from the glamour of those days in television as an awardwinning chat show host and presenter, which she left without regret. “I don’t miss it at all, because I’m not that person any more. I’m like a butterfly who came out of a cocoon. I would have been finished at some point anyway, but luckily I reinvented myself.”
She believes a positive effect of the pandemic is that more people have discovered how showing kindness and compassion to our neighbours and community “makes you feel good – and that motivation can spread like a virus but in a positive way and help us feel connected.”
And Now For The Good News… To The Future With Love by Ruby Wax is published by Penguin, priced £ 14.99. Available now.