The School of Life

Great book about how to live your life

The school of life is a book by Alain de Botton, a philosopher and founder of the school of life. The school of life is a collective of psychologists, philosophers and writers’ views, and this book is an anthology that collects some of its best writing. It’s a guide to help us understand ourselves and others, looking at the self, others, relationships, work and culture. As we no longer seek guidance from religious ideology, as we have done in the past, where do we seek guidance to develop a better education, emotional intelligence, self help and self development. It explores a journey to emotional maturity, first looking at the self which covers self development through philosophical meditation, emotional identity, honesty, self love and emotional scepticism. When dealing with others, it teaches us the values of charity, politeness and charm. This should lead us to form better relationships through finding a partner, developing improved communication, emotional transition, closeness, comforting, being generous, humor, sexual liberation and being true to romantic realism (if you believe in fairy tales and unrealistic beliefs that romance should be in like it is in the movies, then you will be disappointed – no romantic lead has ever been seen ironing his underpants). Within this framework, it then looks at capitalism through authentic work, confidence and failure. It also covers culture; including cultural consolation, appreciation, detachment and cheerful despair. We are imperfect creatures, we are messy and flawed, we make mistakes but we can change and grow, learn and become better people. The single greatest enemy of contemporary satisfaction may be the belief in human perfectibility. Rather than being bitter or full of rage, we should have a form of melancholy. As I have often stated, the sooner we realise that life isn’t fair, the easier life will be. We are not perfect and neither is anyone else, accept that and we can find life and people easier to manage. We often lie, to ourselves as well as others. We are like massionates or puppets, pulled by strings we are not even aware of, under control of things we can sometimes not even be aware of. We self deceive as we live our lives in a storm, on a boat that is not always in control of the seas and waves that it might float upon in calm at other times. Understanding this can improve us and help us move on, and be more forgiving of others. The book is full of ideas to help us build a better you and a better world. The more we understand these invisible forces, the more we are likely to be kinder to others.

Some of the ideas explored that I loved include the story of the boy who befriended a lion by extracting a thorn from an angry lion, who then becomes the boy’s friend. When people are in pain, they can lash out and seem full of rage. Find the cause of the pain, and people can change for the better. Unlike other animals, humans need lots of time to develop under the care of their parents to grow and develop (fouls are standing within 30 minutes of being born, a female grouper will unsentimetly dump upto a 100 million eggs a year in the sandy banks off the north Atlantic seabed, then swim away without bothering to see a single one of her offsprings again and the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet is sexually mature and independent by the age of five).

Most of us are fragile, messy, making mistakes as we blunder on through life, that is part of the human condition we shouldn’t really judge it but embrace it and accept it. Even superheroes will have to use a toilet and do all the things that mortals do, but no man is a hero who is well known. Noone is truly special or complex once we know someone else, we all live similar messy lives and have contradictory thoughts and behaviours. One of the things in James Joyce’s Ulysses, which depicts the life of an ordinary man and tries to show that we are all heroes also. This book was deemed obscene because it features over the course of the day a man going to the toilet and wiping his backside. Funny, something every one of us does probably most every day, would be deemed disgusting and sick. You can turn on movies and watch allsorts of obscene violence in my personal opinion and yet that is ok and sex, the thing that brought everyone of us to life is deemed disguising. Really!

No matter how famous you are, whether you might be a prime minister or president or even a king or a queen, we still do all the same things that normal and special people do, use the toilet, worry, get concerned about how you may appear to others, your appearance. We would do well to embrace vulnerability, accept the messiness, and know that none of us are perfect. The only people who are truly perfect, are the people we just don’t know.

Work. Most of us will spend most of our lives doing one or maybe two different jobs for 50 years. We might often have dreamt of becoming something else but that’s part of the melancholia of life. Accepting and embracing what we do do, might be all we have. We can still dream of all those other things. But they might not be anything that we are able to do even if we had the potential to do anything we wanted.

Culture: Art can be found everywhere and really should allow us to feed the soul. In most of the lifetime of people throughout history we have owned but just a few possessions, sometimes, a borrowed chair to sit on, and a few farming instruments for months. What art and other cultures do is feed the soul, and allow us to explore our own heart and soul and mind and meaning in life. From the 18th century onwards, something changed, we began to be able to buy a few luxuries. Sermons from priests said this was a degradation of our soul and we should focus on this, but with the new buying for pleasure and going to the shops to buy things, we began to become materialistic. In actual fact we pretty much have all we need, but we feel we do not have enough, because we are clearly unhappy. But the fact that we have all we need, we are still not happy. Why is this? We are all at sea, we still strive and see all things that we want, we are always thinking we want something new, something to fill the empty bright hole in our hearts with something shiny and new. People really only require their basic needs which are quite simple, they seek someone to love, a roof over their head, meaning to their work and life, and friends and some money to buy food to feed the family. We also seek attention and if someone can validate that, then we seek that group. Man has spent most of his life requiring very little, but now we seem to need more and more. I should add to this list that we have been designed and manipulated to buy things. One of the things that has shaped our desires is advertisement. Constantly we are bombarded with adverts to want something that we truly desire and that we probably don’t even need. But what do we value. There is an interesting story in this book about the pineapple. Once upon a time this was the rarest of all food items, Christopher Wren put part of this into the architecture of some of his buildings, and the fruit was a desired item that only royalty could afford. However, we began to make pineapples for much cheaper prices and we now know longer see this as the most royal of fruit. Nothing has changed in the pineapple, what has changed is our attitude towards it. Like many things in life, it’s not the value of the item itself but the value that we have placed upon it, the value we give it. We don’t like cheap things. However, there is one thing we could do to change this and that is how we might look at things if we were a four-year-old child, they have no money, they do not know the value of things, they will only find joy in what they find joy in. You might buy them an expensive present but they’re more fascinated by a button on their coat or the wrapping that the box or present a gift comes in. And that is how we should give value to things. The interesting thing about art, culture and great books is that they often deal with sorrow and pain. These things help us know we are not alone, but they’re also part of the human condition. Seeking happiness might not all be all it’s cracked up to be, as Dolly Parton once said, you can’t appreciate the sunshine without a bit of rain. Imagine living only in a world of happiness, it sounds like hell.

After explaining what a bunch of imperfect people we are, messy and complex, it gives a few solutions to how we can develop better wisdom to lead better lives. These include accepting not perfection but just being good enough is ok. Also try to show gratitude – even just delighting in a cup of coffee or nature will change how you look at life and become more appreciative. Try to develop wisdom by being more realistic, humour, being polite, accepting yourself (along with your faults), be forgiving (to yourself and others), develop resilience, success and failure (you can learn more sometimes through failure than success), and if possible – remain calm. A lovely book full of good sense and wisdom.