Well-meant advice for making positive life choices.
A path to success through restraint.
In the second of four proposed books on the Stoic virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom, Holiday focuses on self-discipline as crucial to achieving temperance. The author argues that controlling emotions, thoughts, and actions can benefit everyone, even those who face obstacles and hardships. Pithy chapters extol the “restraint and dedication” evidenced by a host of individuals whom Holiday admires, including Lou Gehrig (among many other high-achieving sportsmen); political figures such as Angela Merkel, George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, and—one of Holiday’s favorites—Queen Elizabeth; writer Toni Morrison; inventor Thomas Edison; Beethoven; and leaders, military figures, and philosophers from ancient Greece. As an example of successful time management and dedication, he praises Morrison’s practice of focusing on her writing in the early-morning hours. As an example of physical self-discipline, he points to Theodore Roosevelt’s efforts to remake his weak and asthmatic body and Franklin Roosevelt’s determination to overcome the limitations of paralysis from polio. “If greatness is our aim, if we want to be productive, courageous members of society,” Holiday asserts, “we need to take care of our bodies.” Challenging one’s body might involve “seeking out discomfort,” which Holiday believes will “toughen ourselves up.” Hoping to motivate readers to make changes in their lives, he advises being neat and organized, devoting oneself to practice, managing time well, pacing oneself judiciously, and avoiding addictions—including an addiction to power. “Of all the addictions in the world,” he points out, “the most intoxicating, and the hardest to control, is ambition. Because unlike drinking, society rewards it. We look up to the successful.” Self-discipline involves “pushing through frustrations. Pushing through criticisms and loneliness. Pushing through pain.” But it also involves self-affirmation. “It is an act of self-discipline to be kind to the self,” Holiday assures readers. “To be a good friend.”
Well-meant advice for making positive life choices.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-19169-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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