Books for Living -- Part 1

During my journey through life, I am aware of several books that have had a significant impact on the ways that I see others and myself through the prism of life. Each book gave me gifts to better understand the complexities of self-understanding as well as ways to interact with others in a more positive and healthy manner.


I call this type of reading a “book for living”. It provides guidelines that are as unique and individual as the person who reads it. None of the books of this type attempt to provide “the answer” to the questions that come from the process of living. They all are “thinking” books and are most useful when read over a period of time and when one has the opportunity to reflect and ponder what is written.


Each book provides the foundation for group study as well as for active interaction with one’s journal or personal retreat facilitator. Like counseling, what one receives from the experience of reading this type of book is entirely the choice for the individual reader. No book by itself changes the reader, but it does offer the chance to learn and accept responsibility in making life choices.


Many in this “books for living” group were published a couple of decades ago. This reinforces a personal and professional belief that we as humans tend to remain the same in how we think and behave year after year. One may rewrite some of these basic concepts with a new cover and offer it as “new and improved”. I believe that the contents are as valid today as when they were first written and will be just as useful for guidance decades after I have left this planet.




Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am, John Powell, S.J. (1969):


Each of us begins life with the learning socialization, the process of learning what others expect us to be to ourselves and to the people around us. We learn what is “normal” so that we can be content with ourselves and be comfortable around others as well as allow them to be comfortable in our company.


When we discover that we are a unique person and that some of our thoughts and feelings do not fit into the norms of the people around us, we tend to be afraid to tell others.


Why? “I am afraid to tell you who I am, because you may not like who I am, and it’s all that I have” says author John Powell.


Powell’s encouragement comes with: “I can only know and understand that much of myself which I have the courage to confide in you”. He continues with: “We would rather defend our dishonesty on the grounds it might hurt others, and, having rationalized our phoniness into nobility, we settle for superficial relationships”.


His confronts the reader with: “I’m sorry, but that is the way that I am, is nothing more than a refuge from self-honesty and a delusion.”


This book concludes with a catalog explaining 37 diverse roles and games that we play to protect ourselves from being our real selves.




Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach (1970)


JLS is a small book with a powerful message of pushing one’s personal limits to a state of excellence through the taking of risks with self and others in our society.


Jonathan is a seagull who learns that being normal in his society is the easiest route to take. The society focus is on getting enough to eat, stay alive as long as possible and behave as every other gull does. There is no encouragement to be unique, learn as much as possible about the unknown by uplifting one’s self out of ignorance without fear, and push one’s self to fly higher with no limits.


Bach has Jonathan encourage other seagulls by stating: “We are free to go where we wish and be what we are” and “break the chains of your thought and you break the chains of your body, too.”


This book concludes with: “Don’t always believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your own understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly”.


These words are as valid for our personal growth today as they were in 1970 and will be in 1070.


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