LEGACY

Soft-headed but kind-hearted, this account of the spiritual legacy we should bequeath to the world is peppered with inspirational stories and sayings, some flavorsome, some not. Psychiatrist Greiff (Tradeoffs: Executive, Family and Organizational Life, 1980), who formerly taught at the Harvard Business School, argues for a revival of the notion of the “intellectual bequest”—a legacy of sage advice, stories, and examples to pass on to future generations. These he groups under eight themes: Loving, Learning, Laboring, Laughing and Lamenting, Linking, Living, Leading, and Leaving. Collectively, he says, these eight L’s “make up the core of the human experience” and represent a ninth L, “our Legacy.” He expounds upon each through his own life lessons, stories about his patients, quotations, and anecdotes. The author’s voice is generous and humane, his psychiatric abilities sharp, but as a spiritual teacher, he comes up short. The book promotes a resolutely secular spirituality, one that praises all spiritual “beliefs and values” and allows that some people are not spiritual at all but only “bio-psycho-social.” Fuzzy terms like “spiritual safety net” substitute for a clear statement of what the author believes about God, immortality, and the meaning of life. The murkiness is made worse by the author’s habit of plucking quotations out of context and welding them together: Nietzsche and Peter Pan on one page, Saint Francis and George Bernard Shaw on another. Despite Greiff’s claims, St. Matthew most assuredly did not have the Nine L’s in mind when writing his Gospel. Since the overall framework is vague, the book is only as vivid as its pieces; these vary in quality, from authentic insights to uncomfortable metaphors (our emotions as parts of a pizza). Not so much an argument as a treasury of points to ponder. May help some people who are seeking “some kind of spiritual renaissance” but may leave others still seeking.