I read 3 books in July. Here is a blurb about each of the 3 books I read in July.
“Lessons from My Teachers” was written by Sarah Ruhl, a playwright, poet, teacher, and professor at the Yale School of Drama. This book expands the definition of “teacher” beyond traditional academics to include parents, children, mentors, etc. Here are some lessons that stood out to me.
Is all of school a way of saying goodbye to your parents to make room for other teachers in life? Is the beginning of school a way of saying your parents can’t teach you everything, and you need independence of mind to go on your way through the world?
You never know where rejection might lead. Sometimes a rejection leads you to your next collaborator or friend.
Piano/band teacher – taught us we were worth teaching, how to practice, how to sit up straight, how to show up every week, how much dull repetition it takes to make something beautiful, and how to make a mistake in the music and keeping playing and keep moving forward.
You are the expert of your own story.
The very young and very old remind us to be in the moment. They walk slowly and look around as they walk.
Students sometimes make the best teachers.
So many events, rituals, and practices that seemed essential pre-pandemic turn out now to be optional.
We need to keep finding teachers over the course of our lifetime. Finding a teacher is also a process of letting oneself be taught – which is a kind of bravery.
One’s attitude toward almost any situation can make it an occasion for a teaching or a learning. What am I teaching right now? What am I learning right now?
Always be deeply interested in other people and the world.
The blue whale swims and swims, and when she wants to eat, she simply opens her enormous mouth and water and garbage and krill flow in. That big blue whale has an automatic sieve system to sort out what’s food and what’s waste. Be like a blue whale. Listen to all criticism, but filter out what doesn’t serve you.
One of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak.
4 out of 5 stars
“Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic – And What We Can Do About It” was written by Jennifer Breheny Wallace, an award-winning journalist and a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Jennifer spent three years traveling across the U.S. interviewing parents and students. What she found is sobering: our culture’s obsession with optimizing performance has contributed to rising rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm among young people. Here are some main takeaways.
At the heart of toxic achievement culture is a painful message kids are absorbing – that their worth depends on what they produce: their GPA, the number of social media followers they have, college admissions, and resume-building activities. They have become proxies for their identity, and many students feel they only matter when they succeed.
Parents, often with the best intentions, unintentionally reinforce this mindset. Wallace describes how families “weave individualized safety nets,” making constant day-to-day decisions aimed at maximizing achievement and preventing anything that might derail future success. In a hypercompetitive world, it’s easy to believe that a “good” college is the gateway to a good life.
Wallace argues that the antidote to toxic achievement culture is mattering – the belief that you are valued for who you are at your core, not for your output.
Ways parents can show kids they matter
respond in a warm and sensitive way
explicitly tell kids how much they matter to you
express unconditional acceptance – even after a failure
show warmth through affection
engage in mutual activities
teach kids how to ask for help when they need it and model these skills yourself
make chores mandatory without an allowance – giving kids real responsibilities builds resilience by showing that their existence and actions genuinely impact others
make volunteering mandatory and widen their circle of concern and caring
Avoid engaging in harsh criticism, invalidating emotions, and comparing kids negatively to others.
As parents, we sometimes think our role is to help fuel and support our kids’ ambition. In a hypercompetitive culture, kids sometimes need the opposite. They need adults to prevent them from sacrificing their minds and bodies on the altar of achievement and to teach them how to build a life they won’t need substances to escape from.
Wallace also highlights what truly predicts long-term well-being for college graduates, and it’s not prestige. Students who reported the highest life satisfaction had deeply engaging college experiences, such as:
taking a course with a professor who made learning exciting
having a professor who cared about the student personally
having a mentor who encouraged the student to pursue personal goals
working on a meaningful project across semesteres
participating in an internship
being active in extracurricular activities
What stayed with me most from this book is Wallace’s reminder that beneath all the pressure, fear, and competition, parents ultimately want the same thing: for their children to live meaningful lives filled with connection, purpose, and joy. We want them to feel valued, and to help others feel valued too. We want them to live lives that truly matter.
This book was fascinating, eye-opening, and deeply relevant.
4 out of 5 stars
“The Truth in True Crime: What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life” was written by J. Warner Wallace, a cold-case homicide detective. In this book, Wallace recounts true crime stories from his real-life experience and provides readers with applicable life-changing truths. This book can be considered a practical wisdom book and a Christian evidence book. Honestly, I didn’t really like the style of writing. It came across as didactic and pastoral, and every chapter aggressively pivoted into a sermon. This was a formulaic hybrid of true-crime and heavy-handed pastoral sermonizing. With that said, here are some lessons:
Embrace friends who hold an objective view of virtue. Identify friends who care about all of you: spiritual well-being, physical well-being, emotional well-being, and ethical well-being.
Your marriage preaches. Preach the right message. Your marriage is an image of Christ’s love for the church. Commit to communication.
Constructing an identity based on shifting cultural trends rather than objective moral truth leaves individuals fragile and lost.
Healthy guilt acts as an internal alarm signaling a need for grace and correction, whereas destructive shame isolates or distorts identity.
Your worship decides your destiny.Where do you spend your money? How do you spend your time? On what do you spend your talents and abilities? What captivates your thoughts and attention? What do you trust/on what do you rely? What do you publicly proclaim? How do you behave?
Trauma occurs when our perceptions of the world and our role in it (our “global” beliefs and goals) are disrupted, especially if we assumed nothing bad would ever happen to us. Traumatized people find themselves “reappraising the traumatic event to perceive it as more consistent with their pre-trauma global beliefs and goals . . . or revising their global beliefs and goals to accommodate their experience.”
Resilient people aren’t permanently paralyzed by the stress of their trauma. Some rebound and continue moving forward. Some flourish, rebounding to levels far above where they were prior to the traumatic event.
People who make sense of and find meaning in their suffering express better psychological and physical well-being and are less likely to be depressed, mentally ill, or experience PTSD. They are also less inclined to overdrink or become addicted to medication and less apt to commit suicide.
3 out of 5 stars
I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!
I read seven books in August 2024 – the most I have read in one month since starting school this year. Here is a brief synopsis of the books I read in August, some of which I will post about in greater detail in the future.
“The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control” was written by Katherine Morgan Schafler, a psychotherapist, write, and speaker and former therapist at Google. I got SO much out of this book and my notes covered the review pages for 2 books instead of 1! This book explored types of perfectionists, lessons learned, and strategies of coping with perfectionism. I will most more about this book in the future, but for now, here are a few lessons:
I am mostly a classic perfectionist (and partially a Parisian perfectionist). I value structure, consistency, predictability, an understanding of all the options so as to make an informed decision, high standards, objectivity, and clarity through organization. I don’t like disorder, I have difficulty adjusting to schedule changes, and I tend to experience spontaneity as stressful. Itinerary-centered existence can rob classic perfectionists of the opportunity to grow in a way that wasn’t planned or goal-oriented.
Right now, with all the things you have yet to achieve, you are as worthy of all the love, joy, dignity, freedom, and connection as you would be had you already achieved them. You are worthy of all these things because you exist.
There are many raw manifestations of perfectionism:
emotional (want to experience a perfect emotional state)
cognitive (want to understand perfectly)
behavioral (want to behave perfectly in my roles and perform perfectly in my tasks)
object (want external thing, such as desk, hair, etc. to exist in a perfect state)
process (want process to begin, continue, and end perfectly)
5 out of 5 stars
“If my body could speak: poems” by Blythe Baird included poems mostly about rape and eating disorders. Here are some lines that stood out to me:
“If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin to begin with, you go to the hospital. If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin to begin with, you are a success story.”
“If your body could speak, would she forgive you?”
“One day after years of starving and gaining and fighting, I stepped on a scale and suddenly that number didn’t say anything about me…and that night nothing on my plate said anything about me either. Later, I got ice cream from a truck and I didn’t have to make myself earn it.”
“I found a way to heal through the poetry. The stage is the only place I could tell my story where it wasn’t a liability I was putting onto anyone. This stage is where i learned to stop hoarding my suffering.”
“Do not say you didn’t try. Remember: you did the best you could in the situation you were in with the materials you had.”
4 out of 5 stars
“Lessons Learned and Cherished: The Teacher Who Changed My Life” was compiled by Deborah Roberts, an award-winning ABC News journalist. This book was touching, although the stories seemed to have a specific format/agenda – nearly every essay mentioned that teachers are underpaid/underappreciated at the end of each essay.
Here are four of the lessons learned and cherished:
Every teacher has the potential to make a student feel connected, valued, and worthy. The greatest gift you can give is your full presence.
A difficult teacher can inspire you to persevere and believe in yourself. – Deborah Roberts
Teachers mean the world for a child’s development. Kids are not guaranteed a wonderful home base. Kids can be struggling with emotional distress or even violence, and their teachers can be the safe haven.
When a teacher believes in a student before they believe in themselves, they blossom. – Keri Shahidi
4 out of 5 stars
“Picturing Joy: Moments of Connection” was compiled by photographer George Lange. George’s work has appeared in many popular publications, and he has shot many of the iconic images from TV shows and ads for TV shows. This book was not quite what I expected. George shared stories of how he captured those moments. There were some great photos and interesting stories. Here are some takeaways from this book:
Photos are the artifacts of the experience a photographer creates. Photos reflect what he feels more than what he sees.
The role of a photographer is only to be hip enough to get in the room but not have to be the center of it. His approach is to create a space for people to reveal a part of themselves to him, and his intention is to find a way to put love out in the world.
“My time with subjects is often incredibly brief. A small window into a life I would never get to share without my camera.”
4 out of 5 stars
“To Hell With the Hustle” was written by Jefferson Bethke, the New York Times bestselling author of Jesus>Religion and It’s Not What You Think and host of The Real Life podcast. This book was not what I expected and seemed very scatterbrained, but there were some good takeaways. Here are some that resonated with me most.
When our work becomes who we are and we derive our ultimate value and meaning from it, it runs the risk of becoming our god – the thing we worship, bow down to, and become slaves of.
It’s time to stop and consider the cost of all this hustle, speed, and disillusionment. To hell with it – meaning we’re done and it comes from Hell. Jesus was never in a hurry. He was actively resisting cultural pressures on many levels. Hustle isn’t him.
Scripture doesn’t talk much about goals. It is focused on our identity and who we are becoming. Are we becoming more like Jesus by the practices and formations we are doing?
Have you ever noticed how a lot of Jesus’ miracles were not a part of his plan? They happened on his way somewhere else. You have to go at a pace that can be interrupted. That can be responsive to the moment in front of you.
The goal is “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” NOT “Well accomplished, my busy and hustled servant.” Well done. Faithful.If we want to get there, we have to actively resist the myriad voices and influences that subtly hypnotize us into a busier, noisier, more hustled lifestyle. Say no, that’s not the way of Jesus. That’s not the speed of Jesus. That’s not the cadence of Jesus. To hell with the hustle. I’ll take him instead.
4 out of 5 stars
“The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness” was written by Robert Waldinger, MD and Marc Schulz, PhD. Robert Waldinger, MD is a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Marc Schulz, PhD is the associate director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development and a practicing therapist.
The Harvard Study of Adult Devlopment has followed the lives of two generations of individuals from the same families for more than 80 years – asking thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements to find out what really keeps people healthy and happy. I will post more about this book in the future, but for now, here are some lessons:
The good life is not a destination. It is the path itself and the people who are walking it with you.
Good relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer.
An investment in our social fitness isn’t only an investment in our lives as they are now. It is an investment that will affect everything about how we live in the future. Like a tree needs water, relationships are living things and need attention and maintenance.
Curiosity goes a long way in relationships. It opens up avenues of conversation and knowledge and helps others feel understood and appreciated.
5 out of 5 stars
“Calling A Wolf A Wolf” consisted of poems by Kaveh Akbar. To be honest, I didn’t really like this collection. The format of the poems bothered me, and the phrases were scattered with no punctuation. Here is an example:
There were many poems about alcoholism, but the language didn’t make sense to me. Here are a few lines I liked:
What Seems Like Joy – “My father believed in gardens – delighting at burying each thing in its potential for growth. Some years the soil was so hard the water seeped down slower than the green seeped up. Still he’d say if you’re not happy in your own yard you won’t be happy anywhere.”
Portrait of the alcoholic floating in space with severed umbilicus – “I always hoped that when I died I would know why. My brother will be so sad he will tell his daughter I was better than I was. He will leave out my cruel drunk nights the wet mattresses my driving alone into cornfields unsure whether I’d drive out.”
“Now I listen for the sighs of people who love me, each agitation I create a reminder that I am less than constant in my grace.”
2 out of 5 stars
I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!
