Book \"review\"

These are some inserts that I liked from the book "Too soon old, too late soon."  For example, it has long been observed that women who are victims of spousal abuse aand are dependent people who have trouble seperating themselves from their abuser.   The role of victim is generally accompanied by a sense of shame abd self-blame  Ignoring the existence of our subconscious tends to have troubling results. We notice first the consequences of such unawareness:destructive patterns of behavior in which we find ourselves surprised that we repeatedly make the same mistakes.   To change such habitual and maladaptive patterns of behavior requires first some recognition of the pattern. People tend to resist this, preferring to invoke coincidence or simply focus on individual events in a way that places responsibility on others.  Steeped in habit and fearful of change, most of us are to some degree risk-averse.  The wager with the highest stakes of all is with our hearts.  How do we determine the other person shares a cooperative vision? We must accecpt risk~ sometime painful mistakes Many people are still yet surprised at the hurt that routinely accompanies our efforts to find someone worthy of our love.  To take the risk necessary to achieve this goal is an act of courage.  Juggling our multiple responsibilities~ worker, partner, parent, friend~ is a challenge Our different roles involve different attitudes  The longing and loves of our youth, so ardently pursued, often lead up toward some combination of amusement and regret in our later lives.  But the greatest risk is not taking any.  Youth is wasted on the young  Only by embracing our mortality can we be happy in the time we have.  Everything we are afraid to try, all our unfulfilled dreams, constitute a limitation on what we are and could become. Usually it is fear and its close cousin, anxiety, that keep us from doing those things that would make us happy.  So much of our lives consists of broken promises to ourselves. The things we long to do~ educate ourselves, become successful in our work, fall in love  And yet we often do not do what is necessary to become the people we want to be.  It is human to shift blame for our failures.  Keeping our expectations low protects us from disappointment  We do not like to think of ourselves as trapped  Rather than take hope from these stories, most people absorb them as additional indications of their own inadequacy.  The slowness with which productive change actually takes place does not play well in an impatient society. Where do we find the determination and patience required to achieve the things we want? Before we can do anything, we must be able to imagine it.  .....examining their lives, taking responsibility for their feelings, deciding what they need to do to be happy~ and doing it.  Confession may indeed be good for the soul, but unless it is accompanied by altered behavior, it remains only words in the air.  The only communication that can be trusted: behavior  "I love you"~taken alone, however, unsupported by consistently loving behavior, this is frequently a lie~ or, more charitably, a promise unlikely to be fulfilled.  We pay attention to words~ours and others~and not enough to the actions that really define us.  It is hard to let go of a comforting illusion, but harder still to construct a happy life out of perceptions and beliefs that do not correspond to the world around us.  No element of dissatisfaction with our lives is more common than a belief that we have in our youth made the wrong choice of partner.  Much of what we do is driven by fear of failure. A primary example is the pursuit of material wealth. This is also the engine that drives our economy and a way of "keeping score." Much of our behavior is driven by some combination of greed and competition.  Success in business seems like a confirmation of the Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest.  If we can take comfort and meaning from some religious belief with its promise of eternal life, so much the better. It takes courage~ the unwillingness to let the present moment be drained of joy by fear of the future or regret for the past.