Genre: Self-Help
Page Count: 108
I have mentioned ‘The School of Life’ before as well in my blogs and reviews. It is an organization founded by the Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton, that aims to provide a well-rounded and emotionally educated living to its audiences. They products and services ranges from short films of YouTube to books and therapy.
This book is from a series of books that is written and edited by The School of Life, where much of its content is written by de Botton himself. De Botton is well-known as the ‘everyday philosopher’ for his ideas are centered around how to incorporate philosophy, an obsolete and uninteresting subject by today’s standards, into our everyday lives in order to make use to philosophy in leading a more aware and fulfill life. Thereby, de Botton has, almost single-handedly, revived philosophy back to its core aim: to help us understand and live our lives more attentively and meaningfully.
I have been following the YouTube channel of The School of Life for a couple of years now, and it has helped me in understanding myself and life in general in a way that I could’ve never been able to through academic education. Their short films, brilliantly written and beautifully visualized and narrated, provide some of the most profound insights into human lives. It is, arguably, the best philosophy channel on YouTube; precisely because it marries philosophical ideas which are heard to consume by an ordinary mind with relevant topics concerned about our everyday lives into easy and fun videos. Therefore, it can help almost everyone to take lessons from philosophy in order to improve their own lives.
Aside from their short films, I haven’t had the access of much of organization’s other variety of products. The first book I read from ‘The School of Life’ library was ‘How to be Alone’ written by Sara Maitland. While that book covered a specific topic towards contentment with solitude, this book covers one of the most important questions of human existence and tries to answer it through the many activities of our lives.
Being asked ‘what makes a life meaningful?’ could put us in a stuttering position where we would be forced to think, against our habit of answering on the spot, whereby we would search our own lives for possible answers. And while the answer to this question are subjective to who is answering it, de Botton, nonetheless, presents different areas of one’s lives where meaning can be forged (love, family, work, friendship, culture, politics, nature, and philosophy), as well as the areas which generally stops us from leading a meaningful life (vague self-understanding, provincialism, selflessness, immortality, and the art of storytelling).
Understandably, reading about such a varied range of important topics, and constantly trying find out what they can each contribute to making of meaningful life, might sound overwhelming, both in writing and reading it, yet de Botton with his conceptually rich understanding of the topics and his precise yet comprehensive prose, which beautifully complements the content, makes reading this book not only effortless but also intellectually rewarding and fun.
As profound and essential as this book is its attempt to find resources of meaningfulness in life, reading it, for a normal person, is ironically just as easy.
Although I am well aware and attuned to most of what de Botton has to say, this book nevertheless felt just as fresh and revelatory as to someone new. This book, although unheard of by many, is one of the most essential books that I could recommend, knowing that every reader would take away key insights which might just help them live their finite lives more purposefully.
Ratings: 5/5 ***** February 1, 2021_