The Art of Happiness at Work
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
and Howard C. Cutter, M.D.
Riverhead Books (2003)

After writing about Linchpin and while reading reading the Dalai Lama’s new book, The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World, I decided to reflect on this helpful book that I had read years ago.

Happiness is feeling in control over what you do everyday. Happiness is the freedom to do your work your own way and assuming that responsibility personally.

Your work is not your entitlement; it’s about earning through effort. If you are not satisfied with your labor, there is nothing wrong with quitting and finding a more rewarding job.

I especially enjoyed the Dalai Lama’s comments on work overload. When the Dalia Lama was asked about being overloaded with work, he said: “What do you mean?” Conscious employers have the responsibility to judge how much a person can responsibly be expected to do. Too much overload is a lack of respect or concern expressed toward the employee. As does lack of employee effort show lack of respect for one’s job and management. The Dalai Lama suggests training our minds to use human intelligence with reason and outlook, an analytical meditation on personal initiative.

The very purpose of making money is to provide ourselves with a means to accomplish something and not basing wealth on something artificial. The realization of interdependence and interconnectedness in the workplace encourages broader vision and more satisfaction. Avoiding destructive emotions, jealousy for example, encourages teamwork with the understanding that no event yields 100% satisfaction.

Linchpin and The Art of Happiness at Work emphasize the individual’s responsibility through effort to not be bored with your job. It’s our responsibility to decide the level of challenge that provides the greatest degree of growth and satisfaction. The emphasis on the flow of absorption through work as a creative art form results in more happiness.

I started reading Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes a few days ago, and I cannot put it down. I only have about 150 pages left.

Before Matterhorn came out on March 23rd I had heard individuals in the book industry saying that it was destined to become a classic. (It is already in its seventh printing.) Of course, we are all excited that Karl is going to be at Lemuria. I have read classic war novels before: The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It was a long time ago that I read these novels, but I remember being deeply moved by them.

Even with this experience, I still wondered when Matterhorn came out what this novel might be for us, for our society, for humanity. Once I really got into the novel, I felt again why we need war novels. A war novel like Matterhorn reminds civilians what war really means, what it means to send men and women into harm’s way.

We can watch one of the amazing documentaries on television, but I think that a novel is much more of an immersion experience. It usually takes a while to read a novel, a few days, a week, a month even. I am still immersed in the Matterhorn experience; Marlantes has managed to get me–a young woman who knows nothing of war–under the skin of Lieutenant Mellas. At least for as long as I am in the middle of the novel, my mind is still there in the middle. Nothing has been brought to any conclusion. The novel form immerses my psyche more intensely for a longer period of time than anything else could in my immediate environment. As I have referenced Sven Birkerts before, this is the shadow life of reading, the sum of our experience with the book and as it relates to all of our other experiences. The shadow life of Matterhorn will linger a long, long time for me.

Regardless of political viewpoint or even general viewpoint on war, I feel that anyone who has never had first-hand experience of war should read Matterhorn. We need writers, like Marlantes, to take us back, to help us remember and to humbly educate those of us who have no memory of war.

Marlantes writes: “I was given the ability to create stories and characters. That’s my part of the long chain of writers, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, and a host of others who eventually deliver literature to the world. I want to do for others what Eudora Welty did for me.”

You did it, Karl.

If you haven’t already, read Karl’s article in Publisher’s Weekly, “Why I Write”, and all of the reader comments.  Also check out the video related to that article.

When April rolls around, I know it’s time to highlight some of the best new baseball books for the year — now is the best time to do your baseball reading, before September arrives and your team blows a 3 game lead over the last 4 games. But it’s April and the Tigers are contending for the AL Central division lead, so baseball still makes me happy. Let’s move on to the books before I break into Terrance Mann’s speech from Field of Dreams (“It’s baseball, Ray”).

The Baseball Codes is a look at all the unwritten rules of baseball — all the little traditions that basically structure every part of the game not already dictated by the official rulebook. In a game where pitchers throw 95 mph fastballs within inches of (and sometimes directly at) hitters, it’s easy to understand how a complicated and subtle system of self-policing has developed — this book is your guide to that and more.

High Heat is a history of the most important pitch in baseball: the fastball. It’s the most thrown pitch in baseball, and even the guys who don’t have a great fastball use it to set up their better pitches. We can even track pitchers on a pitch by pitch basis, to know what pitcher has the fastest average fastball (the current 2010 leader is Detroit’s Joel Zumaya, who also led 3 out of the last 4 years), as well as the slowest average fastball (if we throw out knuckleball-outlier Tim Wakefield, then 47-year-old Jamie Moyer wins the “honor”, clocking in at 81.2 MPH). Accurate fastball data only goes back a few years, so author Tim Wendel has attempted to piece together through baseball folklore and first-hand accounts (when available) who was the ultimate flamethrower in baseball history.

If you’re tired of the modern TMZ/E! News/supermarket tabloid style of sports reporting, I’d recommend Jim Hawkins’ new biography of Al Kaline (and not just because I’m a Tigers fan). Kaline embodies everything great about baseball, and what his story lacks in the self-destructive tendencies so common in athlete-celebrities today, it makes up for in his exemplary dedication and hard work. Added bonus: not a single page devoted to steroid allegations, stolen girlfriends, or Congressional oversight panels.

Joe Posnanski’s The Machine actually came out last year, but it’s worth another look if you missed it. Posnanski is one of my favorite baseball writers, and he’s delivered arguably the definitive story of the 1975 Reds here. If you want to understand what Joe Morgan is rambling on about during ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball when he compares every team to his old Reds team (and every player to a Reds teammates of his), this is the book. I’d also like to thank Joe (Posnanski, not Morgan) for mentioning on his blog that you can buy his book at independent bookstores — we appreciate the support.

Recently I have read two new releases: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand and The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott. What, if anything, do they have in common? At first glance, I would answer– the emphasis on mores and customs attached to a by-gone era.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand written by Helen Simonson, a native Londoner residing in the D.C. area for the last two decades, focuses on propriety and manners. In fact, it could easily fit into the category of  “a novel of manners” which I have not read in many, many years, probably since I had to read one in graduate school. Though not really what I usually read, this look at traditional formal English life gave me quite a chuckle. In fact, it’s nice sometimes to read something light and easy since what I usually read requires intense concentration and critical thinking skills. This novel could also be looked at as satire. While the protagonist, Major Pettigrew, a widower and senior citizen residing in his quaint cottage in a small English village, approaches life with all seriousness and traditional outlooks, his son, a young upwardly moving thirty something, represents modern twenty-first century thinking and orchestrating his life around “how to get ahead fast”, no matter who is in his way. In short, Roger, the son, an intensely driven, shallow womanizer, represents all that is wrong with the new breed of  native Englishmen. When a love interest enters the Major’s  life, however, change and new outlooks begin to make their way into his life.  Though the ending chapters seem a little too much of a believable jump for the reader, this novel still merits reading for its look at the prim and proper English!

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott penned by Kelly O’Conner McNees offers a beautiful novel which focuses on a particular period of time in the life of Louisa May Alcott, the most prolific writer of the time. Most people think of Little Women when this classical author’s name is mentioned, but few are aware of the personal challenges that she and her family faced in getting food on their table and keeping a roof over their heads. In fact, Louisa became the primary breadwinner due to her father’s inability to deal with the real world in the midst of his devotion to Transcendentalism. Being close friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who even rented a house to the family one summer (actually THE summer when this novel was set), Louisa’s peculiar and eccentric father refused to get much work in order for him “to think”!

As the novel progresses, the reader meets Joseph Singer, who is intelligent and spirited and who is obviously  falling in love with Louisa, the devotedly independent novelist. Conflict arises! In that period of time, a woman could not be a writer and be married, for they did not mix. Though visibly torn between the two worlds, the reader knows from history which one Louisa chose. In the midst of the love twist,  Joseph and Louisa share a devoted interest in Walt Whitman’s newly released Leaves of Grass, and Louisa sneaks her father’s copy, which Emerson personally delivered, into her bedroom at night to read secretly by candlelight.

As a historical novel, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott gives a reader a sense of  the life and times in New England in the mid nineteenth century, as well as an accurate look into the complex life of  the popular author of one of the most cherished series of all times. As a historical novel, and as a new work of literary fiction, this cleverly written book is a simple delight.  -Nan

See Joe’s blog for a full article, which appeared in Publisher’s Weekly, and the great variety of comments. Karl will be at Lemuria on May 12th.