Important Life Lessons

 I recently bought a book titled "101 Essays that will Change the Way You Think" that was written by Brianna Wiest. At first I thought this book would be too instructional for my liking. I thought it would be more like the books that tell you everything I should be doing by a certain age and how to you're supposed to make millions of dollars. However, this book is really about psychology and how you can actually change the way you think. 

My favorite essay is lesson number 30. It is titled "Signs the only problem with your life is the way you think about it." She talks about finding the simple pleasures in life and to remember the small things in life are more important. She also mentions that we really spend more time thinking about our lives then we spend living it. She also says "You imagine your life as though someone else was living it." This quote reminds me of The Loss of the Creature by Walker Percy. The idea that your life is only genuine if someone else is there to validate everything you do. I think that's a more common ideal now in young adults than we think. Adolescents use social media platforms to prove to their peers that they can do cool things or go cool places. However, that's when your happiness really starts to decline, when you start comparing your experiences to other people. 

Another essay I found intriguing was essay 22 titled "The inherent zen of creativity". In the first line Wiest says, "Being creative is as innate to being human as eating, talking, walking, and thinking is." In my Intro to English Major class a prominent theme is creativity. I often wonder about how authors come up with their works. I think the metaphysical poets are especially interesting as they rejected typical realism. I think the weird poems are more interesting because they add more elements of surprise and memorability to the works themselves.