At a bookstore for no other reason than to defray my anxiety about an upcoming trip to India, the cover of a self-help book called, “Stuff You You Did Not Learn In School” (or some such, though not the commendable School of Life book) gets a quick scan.
The cover includes a tagline of something like “the ups and downs of life” with either “up” or “down” printed upside down as part of its catchy design.
So there are some ups and downs in all that--are there not, Dear Reader?--even if the exact title and tag-tag line remain elusive to this book scanner?
For sure, though, despite giant-size font and chapters that max out at three pages, every chapter comes with a half-page “summary” of bullet points.
Maybe, for the subjects covered--how to soften your inner critic, live intentionally, practice gratitude, etc,--reducing the reduced makes sense.
I mean, I sure wish someone had spoken to me like a five year old about these things when I was in school, or when I was five.
Still, to reduce rather than to simplify, to think of suffering and curiosity as what answers undo rather than what you never chase down is to think the up and down of now--any now, but this now in particular, perhaps--a fixed point rather than, say, a grid.