Category: 2 – BUY it! (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)
Comments: Deciding which category to put ‘The Geography of Bliss’ in was not easy. I eventually went for the ‘Buy it!’ category because it isn’t really a must read but, my god, I can’t think of any book that I have enjoyed reading more than this one.
Eric Weiner, a ‘grump’, journeys the world searching for the secret to finding happiness and chronicles his learnings from his travels. He has a wonderful sense of humor and his great writing style makes the book very hard to put down. (I listened to the book and he makes for a great narrator too!)
Every year, I pick a book to gift friends and family on their birthdays. This is my new ‘gift’ book. Loved it!
Top 3 Learnings: For a change, I decided to pick out passages as they are so well written!
1. “Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”
2. “Part of positive psychology is about being positive, but sometimes laughter and clowns are not appropriate. Some people don’t want to be happy, and that’s okay. They want meaningful lives, and those are not always the same as happy lives.”
3. “Attention’ is an underrated word. It doesn’t get the… well, the attention it deserves. We pay homage to love, and happiness, and, God knows, productivity, but rarely do we have anything good to say about attention. We’re too busy, I suspect. Yet our lives are empty and meaningless without attention.
My two-year-old daughter fusses at my feet as I type these words. What does she want? My love? Yes, in a way, but what she really wants is my attention. Pure, undiluted attention. Children are expert at recognizing counterfeit attention. Perhaps love and attention are really the same thing. One can’t exist without the other.”
Also, here is my take on attention
Marler's Observatory 