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paintchips1003's review
3.0
Interesting and, at times, meandering stream through the idea that one must commit to a partner, a vocation and one's self, and all of these can be integrated to result in a fulfilling life. Uses historical literary figures autobiography, some Buddhist ideals and autobiography to explore the ever-evolving "marriages" one undertakes.
anitaashland's review
5.0
David Whyte is my favorite poet because he also understands the corporate and business world and brings his poetry into business workshops. In this book he describes how we have the ability to fall in love with another person, a work, and even ourselves.
Whyte says we put so much emphasis on finding our calling or vocation when in reality our work often finds us:
To glimpse our vocation, we must learn how to be sought out and found by a work as much as we strive to identify it ourselves. We must make ourselves findable by being seen; to do that we must hazard ourselves and make ourselves available to the world we want to enter. Finding and being found is like a mutual falling in love. To have a possibility of happiness we must at the beginning fall in love at least a little with our work. We can choose a work on a mere strategic, financial basis, but then we should not expect profound future happiness as a result."
The only downside to the book was his use of Robert Louis Stevenson as an example in the marriage section. I'm not very interested in Stevenson, so that dragged a bit, but Whyte's insights about the marriage relationship are well worth reading.
I really enjoyed his use of Jane Austen as a example of how to write even if you have less than ideal conditions for writing. If you are a writer Whyte pretty much eliminates excuses for not writing, by saying writing just 100 words a day will yield a book in three years.
Finally, I appreciate how he looks at the work/life/relationship balance in a different and more nuanced way. The "marriage of marriages" as he calls it:
"...the need to live in multiple contexts, multiple layers and with multiple people all at the same time without choosing between them. A kind of spiritual and imaginative multitasking."
Whyte says we put so much emphasis on finding our calling or vocation when in reality our work often finds us:
To glimpse our vocation, we must learn how to be sought out and found by a work as much as we strive to identify it ourselves. We must make ourselves findable by being seen; to do that we must hazard ourselves and make ourselves available to the world we want to enter. Finding and being found is like a mutual falling in love. To have a possibility of happiness we must at the beginning fall in love at least a little with our work. We can choose a work on a mere strategic, financial basis, but then we should not expect profound future happiness as a result."
The only downside to the book was his use of Robert Louis Stevenson as an example in the marriage section. I'm not very interested in Stevenson, so that dragged a bit, but Whyte's insights about the marriage relationship are well worth reading.
I really enjoyed his use of Jane Austen as a example of how to write even if you have less than ideal conditions for writing. If you are a writer Whyte pretty much eliminates excuses for not writing, by saying writing just 100 words a day will yield a book in three years.
Finally, I appreciate how he looks at the work/life/relationship balance in a different and more nuanced way. The "marriage of marriages" as he calls it:
"...the need to live in multiple contexts, multiple layers and with multiple people all at the same time without choosing between them. A kind of spiritual and imaginative multitasking."
jenneyrebecca's review
5.0
P 30: "Perhaps the most difficult marriage of all -- the third marriage beneath the two visible, all-too-public marriages of work and relationship -- is the internal and often secret marriage to that tricky movable frontier called ourselves: the marriage to the one who keeps changing at the center of all the outer relationships while making promises it hopes to God it can keep. What is heartbreaking and difficult about this inner self that flirted, enticed, spent time with and eventually committed to a person or a career is that it is not a stationery entity; an immovable foundation; it moves and changes and surprises us as much as anything in the outer world to which it wants to commit."
P 41-2 "At birth we fall in love again with our mother through our visual and physical senses. In a sense we come already equipped with the knowledge of what to look for. Far inside each of us is a foundational ground that recognizes _mother_. Our survival depends on it. We look for nourishment and protection in those first moments but also, ultimately, underneath it all, though we do not know it, for something that is actually preparing us one day for leaving that same loving protection, for an enabling force helping us to stand on our own two feet.
It is intriguing to think that the first falling in love that happens to a person has at its base something that must also, at the end, take the person beyond that cradling hand. Our first love is something that has the seeds of its demise right at the center of its very necessity. It may be that within the seed of any relationship, any work, any established sense of identity, is an internal intuition of how it will eventually disappear. Something inside the protective walls of our happy relationship, our settled career, our established sense of our self may be preparing us, willingly or unwillingly, for an emancipation, a life beyond it which if intuited too early might be frightening to us, beyond our ability to reach."
P 41-2 "At birth we fall in love again with our mother through our visual and physical senses. In a sense we come already equipped with the knowledge of what to look for. Far inside each of us is a foundational ground that recognizes _mother_. Our survival depends on it. We look for nourishment and protection in those first moments but also, ultimately, underneath it all, though we do not know it, for something that is actually preparing us one day for leaving that same loving protection, for an enabling force helping us to stand on our own two feet.
It is intriguing to think that the first falling in love that happens to a person has at its base something that must also, at the end, take the person beyond that cradling hand. Our first love is something that has the seeds of its demise right at the center of its very necessity. It may be that within the seed of any relationship, any work, any established sense of identity, is an internal intuition of how it will eventually disappear. Something inside the protective walls of our happy relationship, our settled career, our established sense of our self may be preparing us, willingly or unwillingly, for an emancipation, a life beyond it which if intuited too early might be frightening to us, beyond our ability to reach."
conorsweetman's review
4.0
Very strong premise. Tapers off occasionally but overall it was a beautifully resonant book.
laurend's review
4.0
Really just 3 1/2 stars but WELL worth the read. Fascinating, insightful, type of thing you can read and re-read to keep learning new things, but a bit dense in spots, a bit repetitive in others. Got me on my Robert Louis Stevinson kick!
myrto229's review
2.0
I hoped to like this, since I've heard such great things about this author. I couldn't make it through, however. I find the constant gushing about The Gift of Creativity (with a capital letter, yes) to be so wearying that I am almost instantly turned off by anyone who engages in this gushing, which Whyte does.
I also just didn't get how the examples of people in the 18th and 19th centuries (Stevenson, Austen, and Dickens) applied to contemporary management of work/life/relationships.
Beyond that, I have even more problems with the concept of the self, which Whyte doesn't problematize at all here (not that he should in this context, I guess).
Just a little too sentimental for me.
I also just didn't get how the examples of people in the 18th and 19th centuries (Stevenson, Austen, and Dickens) applied to contemporary management of work/life/relationships.
Beyond that, I have even more problems with the concept of the self, which Whyte doesn't problematize at all here (not that he should in this context, I guess).
Just a little too sentimental for me.
melliesmel's review against another edition
2.0
The last chapter was the most insightful and most thoughtful. I believe the rest could be best described as: obnoxiously verbose.