Mr. Brooks,
I just finished listening to your new book, "The Meaning of Your Life," although, of course, listening is hardly all I did. I heard about your book while listening to the Andrew Yang Podcast (what a guy, right?) and I knew instantly that I needed to give it a go. I am still processing it all, and probably will be for a while, which is one of the ways I know it was good. As a regular seeker of purpose, meaning, love, and happiness, I have read countless books on mindfulness and longevity and philosophy and psychology. I've taken a lot from each of those books, and continue to piece together what makes sense to me for my life, while challenging myself to grow and be better. I am probably a very typical striver as you would expect of your readership, and I describe my particular type as a problem solver. My career, romantic life, friendships and personal pursuits often boil down to chasing down problems, and ideating and executing solutions (obviously bad for romantic relationships - which I've started to untangle). As a people manager for many years now, I have counseled my mentees and future leaders that people are complex, and that's what drives me as a manager; optimization problems of math and statistics can be solved, but how to create movement and growth within other people is an ever-changing, unsolvable challenge that requires vigilant nurturing, personal growth and adjustments, and courage. You could say that exemplifying good management and leadership is my calling - it's at least part of what gives my professional work purpose.
Speaking of courage, I first and foremost want to thank you for yours. As an avid reader of many similar books, I have found that many dive deep into only one area, which would be okay if they acknowledged the limited scope. But instead, I find they tend to sell their ideas as the only thing that matters, and then show different angles and examples to reinforce that one, central concept. This has left me trying to piece these things together in perhaps an unstructured method. "Ah ha! The key to life is rest! No, it's balance. No, it's a growth mindset." This has also left me aching for models to put it all together, and trying to piece it together myself. As a hobbyist writer, this has also discouraged me, as a part of me would love to author a masterpiece of a book that is all encompassing; but seeing that niche books sell, I've wondered if our world is too shallow to absorb multiple concepts in a single book. Yours was a true masterpiece, I think. It weaves in a lot of those ideas I've explored in other reading, but provides structure that speaks to the left-sided need for logic, while giving a vocabulary for the things we cannot explain with a formula. So thank you for having the courage to tackle such a monster topic and to do it so eloquently, without excessive elaboration or salesmanship.
Secondly, I wanted to thank you for highlighting a few things that really resonated with me. Even though I am a rigorous planner, with my life's budget planned until I'm 100 years old, and vacations planned decades in advance, I've learned, through an admittedly privileged version of suffering, that life will throw curveballs and that we need to sometimes be okay with not knowing all of the answers. When the company I worked for announced it was relocating its North American headquarters across the country, and almost all of my colleagues and I would be receiving offers to relocate, we were devastated by the difficult choice and the change we'd face either way - either we'd have to pick up our lives and the lives of our families and move to an unfamiliar area with a very different way of life, or we'd have to find a new job to stay put. While many knew their decisions quickly - they had to stay for their partners' jobs or their kids - it was uneasy for everyone. Around that time, I found this quote, and shared it on social media, which was comforting to many of my colleagues and friends.
"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. it is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."― Rainer Maria Rilke
Your book reminded me that having outstanding, unanswered questions, is sometimes a part of life, and perhaps, a lot of where growth happens. If the answers could all be googled, then the meaning of life is null. It's a hard thing for a problem solving striver to accept, but an important reminder for that same reason.
Another concept I've been focusing in on as part of my New Year's Resolutions (yes, I do those, so typical) is to re-wire my brain to consider exercise and getting outdoors as not just a necessary evil or a mandatory sometimes-thing, but that it gives me more pleasure than idly doomscrolling or playing games on my phone, which, like an addict, I could tell was starting to taking too much time in my life but also wasn't willing to quit cold turkey or apply other effective strategies. Your book didn't, to my recollection at least, hit on this point a lot, but it did talk about various ways in which going through the motions helps illuminate the meaning and purpose, and I felt like that was very similar to my re-wiring my brain concept. Your discernment exercise was especially helpful in evaluating and adjusting my focus and reasons.
I am a strong believer that Andrew Yang is right about the shift in our world that's coming as a result of technology and AI. I love tech, use it in my work and personal life to a further extent than most, which is why is part of the reason I am so convinced that a lot of people are going to have a hard time finding meaningful or even livable jobs in the future. At the same time, I often grapple with the depression that seems to be growing in our society and a lot of examples in my personal circles. Someone once put the idea in my head that my boyfriend at the time was using video games as a form of escapism - he wasn't successful in real life but he could achieve in his virtual world. It has stuck with me as a watchout of gamers as romantic partners in general, but also for my own wellbeing - when I may choose to play again, I wonder if I'm trying to escape the failures or inadequate progress in my real life. What I couldn't quite make sense of was why this was so bad, until your book explained it. When we fill our time with distractions - and even if not gaming, I am very guilty of filling my time with different forms of "productive" activity and even multitasking by listening to an audio book while I walk or do chores - we don’t give ourselves the freedom to be bored and to ponder the big stuff. This is really important, I think, for our society to hear. Say it louder for those in the back!
I may be a "mean boss" with my "traditional" thinking that we should be going to work most days, so I require my team at work 3 days a week, with one work from home day (we work 4/10s). I may be a bit biased, but I perceive my very small team to be outperforming teams ten times the size, and I attribute much of that to the cross-talk, in-person collaboration and relationship building, and focus that comes from being in the office. My teams also tend to have a lot of satisfaction in their work and profess enjoyment of the challenging problems and the social aspect of working with really smart and talented people. Maybe I'm just lucky, but since I've built a few teams now, I think there's something to it. The headlines about return to office mandates and initiatives are so baffling to me, and the cynical assumptions about manager's motives in doing so are completely misguided, in my estimation. I may be unpopular when I say this, but I believe depression and work from home have a correlation, and that return to office mandates are good for society. So shoot me! Adversaries point out the time savings of not having to commute, or in some cases, even showering and getting ready for work, the cost savings in gas, and the benefits of "focus" by not being disturbed. In our world that is constantly vying for attention, I am guilty of not having as much focus on the occasions I work from home, and I assume I'm not the outlier. Your book has given me another thought: maybe even the commute is a good thing. Whether we're listening to music, which could be therapeutic, using the commute to listen to an audio book or podcast - a time strictly dedicated to personal development - or zoning out, being intentional not to have a screen in our faces, maybe its merits are greater than the perceived cost of lost time and expensive gas.
Anyways, this has already been a longer note than I intended, so I'll bring it to a close while I keep processing the good stuff in your book. But I was moved to write to you to let you know that I deeply appreciate the wisdom, science, philosophy and vocabulary you poured into this book. It truly is a masterpiece, and one I will strongly recommend to, well, just about anyone. I plan to explore some of your earlier work, and I hope you continue to explore these topics and the dynamically shifting atmosphere of our simulated lives. I'm no longer a practicing Christian, but this is more like God's work than most of what I saw in many years of religious practice. It is really important to be grappling with these huge topics and helping others to find meaning but also to sit with the questions that trigger their own grappling of these topics.
With love and gratitude,
Laura
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