Ameera JR’s Reviews > Penguin Books Ltd A Therapeutic Journey Lessons from the School of Life. > Status Update

Genetic evolution moves a lot less quickly than human history, making relics of much about our minds and bodies. It should be no wonder that we often eat too much, develop backache, tremble at the thought of sharks and get statistics entirely wrong. Narrowly speaking, it isn't our fault. It's just that a lot of who we are and what we want made a lot more sense in a world that no longer exists.

we can throw off the veil of illusion that works to separate us from the universe and start to identify with cosmic totality. It no longer matters exactly where we end and others begin; everything belongs to the same whole. There is a little less reason to grasp, to be puffed up, to be proud or to become embittered. We can survey the course of our lives and of our societies with calm indifference.

« Our flawed brains are fateful generalizers from their earliest moments. They take the raw material of our young lives and extrapolate universal theories from it which can destroy our chances of responding adequately to the diverse and novel conditions of adult reality. »

« .. we may be following a life script simply because it feels familiar, not because it is rational or in any sense connected to our satisfaction, and thereby offer us a chance to invent newer and more satisfying ways to lead our lives. »

« ..We will have liberated ourselves from the madness of the age when we can look on loud and heroic lives-perhaps led by people we once knew-and with good faith say that this is not for us, that we are happier where we are, because we at last understand what we really require to survive mentally: a quiet life, cosiness, connection, and an ongoing lack of drama. »

« We should get better at detecting when illness might be drawing in, what the triggers for it might be. Then, when it is upon us, we should do and decide nothing. We shouldn't send emails or deliver judgment on our lives or plan for the future. We should, as much as possible, stop all mental activity and rest. »

« .. Our sadness
starts to seem like a personal curse rather than what it more fairly always is: an inevitable feature of being alive. »

“If we do not allow ourselves frequent occasions to bend, we will be at far greater risk of one day fatefully snapping.”