How to Deal with Adversity (The School of Life)
Christopher Hamilton
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 1250059003
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE IS DEDICATED TO EXPLORING LIFE'S BIG QUESTIONS IN HIGHLY-PORTABLE PAPERBACKS, FEATURING FRENCH FLAPS AND DECKLE EDGES, THAT THE NEW YORK TIMES CALLS "DAMNABLY CUTE." WE DON'T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS, BUT WE WILL DIRECT YOU TOWARDS A VARIETY OF USEFUL IDEAS THAT ARE GUARANTEED TO STIMULATE, PROVOKE, AND CONSOLE.
AN INSPIRATIONAL, ENTERTAINING, AND INSTRUCTIVE GUIDE ON WHAT TO DO WHEN FACED WITH ADVERSITY AND HOW TO DERIVE MEANING FROM IT
No matter how insulated we are by wealth or friends, we can all expect to undergo some form of loss, failure, or disappointment. The common reaction is to bear it as best we can―some do this better than others―and move on with life. Dr. Christopher Hamilton proposes a different response to adversity. Focusing on the arenas of family, love, illness, and death, he explores constructive ways to deal with adversity and embrace it to derive unique insight into our condition. In How to Deal with Adversity, offering examples from history, literature, and science, Hamilton suggests how we might recognize it as a precious source of enlightenment, shaping our very existence.
which is an inheritance of love. And, of course, to love in that way can itself lead us away from frustration and anger. No one can say for another whether he or she might be able to find things good in the way Rilke suggests is possible. What we make of his thoughts lies in our hands, and with the expanses and limitations of our own character. But I would say: you should try to do what Rilke suggests. Try to open your eyes to the endless extraordinary sights of the natural world; we go round
the friendship. And the same goes for romantic love, as Dorothy Rowe pointed out (Depression: the Way out of Your Prison: 133–4). If you want your love to flourish, accept that you cannot fully know your beloved, that your beloved cannot fully know you, and that, per impossibile, were you to know each other fully, that would kill the love. Jealousy Bearing this in mind can also help when dealing with jealousy, one of the emotions most destructive of love. Many people are subject to jealousy in
responsible for his illnesses. There is a huge capacity in Johnson to cut through appearances and make us face the reality of our condition. For example, he once remarked to his friend Boswell that the latter was forever complaining of being melancholy; this, he believed, showed that Boswell liked his mental suffering. No one, he said, talks of that which he is desirous to conceal, and every man desires to conceal that of which he is ashamed … [M]ake it an … obligatory law to yourself never to
you are afraid of giving me pain, which I do not value.’ … Later, when no one was looking, Johnson managed to get hold of a pair of scissors in a drawer near the bed, and plunged them deeply into the calves of each leg. The only result was a large effusion of blood … (Samuel Johnson: 598–9) Like my father, Johnson displayed no self-pity. But he was far from calm and his stoicism was of a quite different kind. Two deaths, quite different, yet similarly admirable. There is no one good death, one
you have earned, worked for, something that is worthy of you. Whether it arrives suddenly or slowly, your death could be something that you make fully your own because you see it as being at one with your life, as being something that you live each day, just as you make yours the rest of what happens to you by carving out of it an inner destiny parallel to your external destiny. To that extent, as I suggested earlier, the fact that we are mortal is central to the meaning we can find in life.