How to Be Alive: A Guide to the Kind of Happiness That Helps the World
Language: English
Pages: 448
ISBN: 0062236709
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
“This is the book where self-help turns into helping the world—and then turns back into helping yourself find a better life. Fascinating and timely!”—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
What does it take to achieve a successful and satisfying life? Not long ago, the answer seemed as simple as following a straightforward path: college, career, house, marriage, kids, and a secure retirement. Not anymore. Staggering student loan debt, sweeping job shortages, a chronically ailing economy—plus the larger issues of global unrest, poverty, and our imperiled environment—make the search for fulfillment more challenging. And, as Colin Beavan, activist and author of No Impact Man, proclaims, more exciting.
In this breakthrough book, Beavan extends a hand to those seeking more meaning and joy in life even as they engage in addressing our various world crises. How to Be Alive nudges the unfulfilled toward creating their own version of the Good Life—a life where feeling good and doing good intersect. He urges readers to reexamine the “standard life approaches” to pretty much everything and to experiment with life choices that are truer to their values, passions, and concerns.
How do you stop placing limits on your potential impact? How do you make your choices really matter in everything from your clothing purchases to your career? How do you find the people who will most support you in your quest for a good life? To answer these questions and more, Beavan draws on classic literature and philosophy; surprising new scientific findings; and the uplifting personal stories of real-life “lifequesters”—people who are breaking away from those old broken paths, blazing fresh trails, and reveling in every step along the way.
“There is a movement afoot for a better life and Colin Beavan is its prophet, with a new book as powerful as his already classic No Impact Man.”—John de Graaf, coauthor of Affluenza
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certain life course will impose a cost on our world community, we should not take that course lightly? That we should be sure it is what we really want? To be clear, the question here is still not “Should I parent?” We’ve established that there is no escaping parenthood, at least as the term is defined in the wide sense of nurturing and caring for others. So the real question is “Who should I parent?” Or to put it another way: Would it make me happier to nurture a(nother) child of my own, or
young calf, he could see that the calf needed its mother and let the cow live longer. He became a different kind of butcher. In fact, he became a sort of saintly butcher. At all times in all places a simple question rose in his mind: Given my situation, how can I help? Following our calling does not depend on our circumstances. It is not the job title alone that matters but the attitude we take toward doing the work. Why are you alive? Why do you do your job at all? There is only one calling:
stories are so old and so deep that we live in them the way a fish lives in water and doesn’t even realize it’s there. Writing down the answers to these questions will help you identify some of the stories you are living in. You don’t need to challenge them. Just write them down. a. Write the names of three people you consider heroic. What did or do they have in their character that you believe you don’t? b. What obstacles in the world and in yourself stand in the way of your changing your life
started looking for local sources for my free-range eggs and ended up buying ten hens. We haven’t bought eggs since and usually give a dozen away each week, too. Kim Went to a Community Meeting New York, New York: I am originally from Pennsylvania and I had heard of drinking water being poisoned by fracking for natural gas there. I heard that the gas industry was building pipelines to bring fracked gas into New York and I went to a community meeting about it. I ended up becoming heavily
solving our global crises. That’s my list of what defines real success. It’s not everybody’s list, but it’s mine. Now here are the two big questions this book is going to help answer for you: What is your definition of real success? How can you make it a reality? How This Book Works and Why You Don’t Have to Change Your Whole Life to Make It Better for You Maybe you want to be a vegetarian in a family of meat-eaters. Or maybe you want to do something more radical, such as move to Africa to
