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Rereading The Book of Joy, Three Years Later

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In 2017 I loved The Book of Joy, by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with Douglas Abrams so much that I now own my own copy.

The last time I was looking for joy, I was traveling in Greece. It seems funny to me now that at a time when, looking back, my life seemed pretty easy and wonderful, I felt that I was lacking true joy. After rereading that post I wrote three years ago, I think I was actually looking for a personal escape. I was working at a company I loved, doing a job I loved, but I felt stressed and overworked. I wanted to feel happier in the career choices I’d made. I wanted to know that I didn’t make the wrong choices and that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I just needed to shift my attitude and my perspective and then I’d feel more joyful about my daily life.

And it’s true – a lot of what the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop say truly boils down to an attitude adjustment. Telling yourself to find joy and be grateful. Reminding yourself that everyone is struggling and your struggles are not unique, meditating about the people around you and wishing them happiness which will in turn bring you more happiness. These things aren’t true changes that you need to make in your life. They are mental shifts.

It was also easy to feel more joyful after vacationing in Greece. I took a break from my phone and the internet, I observed a new culture and world around me, I relaxed, exercised, and drank ouzo. I was full of joy.

But now. After the year we’ve had I felt like another dive into The Book of Joy was warranted. I am feeling lonely, sad, self-centered, and stuck. My grandparents just died. When I picked up this book, I was looking for meaning and purpose beyond my day to day activities. If my grandparents were able to live their lives in meaningful ways that made such a difference to so many around them (as I’d come to realize at their funerals), then what could I do to give my life that same sense of purpose and fulfillment?

It’s amazing how you can read a book more than once and take away different messages each time. Different chords ring true, different phrases stand out, and different chapters make more sense. Last time, I unknowingly focused on anything related to internal happiness. My own joy.

What I took from the book this time was its focus on others. You can’t just find happiness within yourself. You can’t just will it to happen with an attitude adjustment. You actually have to go live a purposeful life. And the way to do that is to actually focus on others. Life is meaningful in relation to the people around you. The people you help, the people you go through stuff with, the people you love. Your life’s meaning comes from what you do for others. Focusing on others take the focus off yourself. You forget your own troubles but you find such joy in making others happy that your troubles aren’t important.

It’s been difficult to do this in a pandemic. How can we focus on being kind to others when we can’t see their face under the mask? How can we practice compassion when we’re holed up in our own homes? It makes sense that I’ve turned inward, focusing more on myself. But perhaps it’s because of this pandemic that we should be turning even more to others. Helping each other, supporting each other, talking to each other. It’s just so difficult.

I rarely reread books, but this one was worth it. It was worth the reminder right now that even though it feels like we are all living in our own little Covid-bubbles, we are actually all still connected. Even though we feel isolated and we’re struggling, there are others who are struggling as well. Even though it’s difficult, we will get through this by focusing on the greater community, the world around us, and helping others.

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2021 Reading List: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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Maybe it was just coincidence that the first book I finished in 2021 was a book about a dystopian replacement of the United States, right when we are watching extreme displays of anarchy play out in real life at the U.S. Congress. Crazy. Appalling. So wrong. I could go on, but this isn’t about politics today. This is just my book review.

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood, is a sequel to her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, which I read in 2019. Then, like now, I marveled at a book that is written to be wholly fictional and unrealistic and yet is so believable that it may actually happen. I remember thinking that The Handmaid’s Tale was a well-written book but kind of boring in terms of action and plotline. The Testaments, on the other hand, was the opposite. There was a lot going on in this book, and Atwood pretty much required you to read The Handmaid’s Tale first so that you know the background and context of this Gileadean world.

Despite being written some 35 years after The Handmaid’s Tale, the connection to the characters and the life they live is seamless.

The book is set about 15 years after the time of the The Handmaid’s Tale, and follows the experiences and accounts of three women, who are, inevitably, connected.

The first, a young girl, Agnes, the daughter of a Commander. Then another young girl, Daisy, who lives in Canada with her parents who run a thrift shop. Lastly, Aunt Lydia, one of the founding Aunts of Gilead, the one who is in charge.

Throughout the book, you realize that everything about their lives is based on lies and deceit. Agnes’ parents were not her real parents. She gets a step-mother, Paula, who had lied about the way her previous husband had died. She gets out of an arranged betrothal by lying and saying she had a calling to become an Aunt. Daisy’s parents aren’t her real parents. They are involved in a secret organization that smuggles girls and women out of Gilead to safety. Daisy had actually been smuggled out of Gilead herself when she was a baby and everyone in Gilead is looking for her. She must lie and deceive in order to sneak back in to Gilead with the hope that she can be a messenger to reveal the crimes of Gilead and bring about its destruction. Lydia’s entire life is built on lies, eavesdropping on every conversation in order to use what’s said and play the right hand. She says she is the founder and is committed to the success of Gilead but she’s actually plotting its demise and has been since she was captured.

Once again, I am surprised by how little time passed between the coup that resulted in the founding of Gilead, and the current events of the book. I had commented that in The Handmaid’s Tale it seemed that only 3 or 4 years had passed – Offred remembered her previous life, her husband, her child, as if it had happened so recently. And now reading The Testaments, I realize that if Aunt Lydia founded Gilead and she had already been considered old then and she is still alive to run the place, then we are only talking about 20 years of Gilead.

So there are women who remember the old ways. There may only be one generation of children who’ve been brought up completely engrained in this dystopian culture. And yet everyone acts like, this is the world, this is the way it is. It’s amazing how they forgot. It’s amazing how they could have adapted to this life of lies, brainwashed into thinking that Gilead is a better place than the world before.

Violence keeps them there. A violent and oppressive system that Lydia herself came up with and devised the rules for. The lack of power keeps women from rebelling. Killing their own citizens keeps them from running away. Fear for their lives and the lives of people they know and love keeps them quiet and subdued.

When you boil it all down, any society could become like this. Take away the power, change the rules, resort to fear and violence to contain the disorderly, and you have a system that is completely dysfunctional and morally wrong. But those with the power might say, whose morals? Everyone thinks their own worldview and way of life is the correct one. That’s why they’re living it. We all think everyone else is wrong, had made the wrong decision. The most extremists will fight, kill, overthrow, and condemn those who don’t believe what they believe or do what they say is right. The most extreme will spread lies, convince others to join them, incite insurrection, all in the name of what they think is fair and just. They think their world is better than reality and they will stop at nothing to control everyone around them and contain them in it.

I know I said I wouldn’t get political, but I leave you with this. Is the world we actually live in today much different from this fictional futuristic society?

2017 Reading List: Start With Why by Simon Sinek

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I just finished a book called Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek.

At first I didn’t like it. When I read inspirational type nonfiction books, I unrealistically expect them all to write like Malcom Gladwell, who is my favorite. I love the way Gladwell tells stories, gives details, and really explains his point in a way that makes you think “oh my God, that makes so much sense.”

But Sinek is not Gladwell, so I was disappointed at first with the style of writing. Even after finishing the book, I’ll tell you that the style of writing is not my favorite. But the point he drives home is clear. His book was thought-provoking. His message was obvious. His argument, if you could call it an argument, makes total and utter sense.

Continue reading →

2017 Reading List: vol. 1

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Happy Steeler Sunday, friends! It’s the middle of a long weekend and I have been thoroughly enjoying it, doing what I love most – working out, reading, sipping wine, and hanging out with my hubby and my greyhound.

I was thinking towards the end of last year that I want to focus more on the books that I read. I read a lot of books. I read so many books that I often forget what I’ve read or I forget what the book was even about. And that certainly doesn’t mean it was a bad book. I just get really caught up in what I’m currently reading that when someone mentions something else, my mind goes blank. I’ve been trying to keep a list of the books I’ve read and 1-2 sentences about each one, so now I can pull out my phone, look at the Notes app, and it all comes back to me.

During 2017 (and beyond?), I want to give you all the rundown of the books I read. I’ll give you a super short synopsis and some of my opinions, which are not right or wrong. I’ll try not to give anything away 😉 Nothing brings people together like a good book, right?

Without further ado, my first book of 2017… Continue reading →