If your self wants help read Hamlet, watch “The West Wing,” and watch “The Bureau” too.
Hamlet is about people whose iffy logic, iffy views on history, and iffy assessments of their own iffy-ness lead them to proffer, hedge, justify and finagle the costumes, scripts, and directives we all must use on the endless stages of life where we strive to answer the question that opens the play: “Who’s there?”
“The West Wing” is about people desperate to do their job well but who nevertheless put self-deprecation before bravado and accept that they fail more often than they succeed.
Everyone in “The Bureau” (a great show I just discovered) is always lying and always telling the truth (really) so as to take advantage of what is good about strangers, ruin their lives, and thus serve a cause that looks to be patriotism but is, in fact, love.
In each case, there is the kind of precise language that helps you identify and name your feelings, models for improving the conversation you have with yourself and the world, tools for navigating power dynamics, observed detail that makes you smarter, and instructions for how to be (or not be) a person like the one you are or wish to avoid being.
Needless to say, there is much more to say about the self-helpiness of each of these dramas and I may aim to say more about them in the future. But right now I need to catch up on posts and try to come to terms with my anger at the Supreme Court.