Book: A Short Guide To A Happy Life

I like Anna Quindlen’s work, it’s beautiful and thoughtful, poetic without being overly flowery. A Short Guide To a Happy Life is from a commencement speech she never gave because it was cancelled by protesters, beautifully illustrated with pictures.

It’s short, because really it contains a very simple message: be more than your job, have more in your life than your career, value the people around you.

Which maybe sounds a little trite when I write it, but doesn’t when she does. So take 15 minutes to have a read.

“Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement. It would be wonderful if they came to us unsummoned, but particularly in lives as busy as the ones most of us lead now, that won’t happen. We have to teach ourselves how to make room for them, to love them, and to live, really live.”