Karen Duffy - Wise Up: Irreverent Enlightenment from a Mother Whos Been Through It

Dear Reader,

When youre in a bookstore browsing titles, its not easy to decide which book to blow your hard-earned cash on. Some people just read the summary on the jacket flap or look at the back cover to see who praised it. I assure you that if you take just a moment to read on, I will persuade you that this tome is worth every penny of your investment. If the salesclerk is burning a hole in the back of your head with his glare, slide over behind a bookcase and keep reading.

You come from a long line of survivors. You are the latest link in an unbroken chain of ancestors. The Latin root for survive is supervivere, meaning to live beyond, live longer, and continue in existence after the death of another. You are the descendant of people who lived through natural and man-made disasters, wars, pandemics, and cataclysms of all kinds. They endured pain, grief, fear, and loss. They outlasted quarantines. This is your genetic inheritance.

You are humanitys greatest upgrade. You are a miracle, a wonder. You are forty trillion cells thrumming with life force. There is an original, radiant, and unrepeatable brilliance within you. This is the raw material from which we shape our lives.

Now that we agree that you are alive, we can also agree that you have many big questions. Why were you born? How can you be a good person? How many cannibals would your body feed? And of course, how shall you live? Will the course of your life be determined by drift or by decision? Dont we owe it to our intrepid ancestors to do our best to live a good life of meaning and purpose?

Imagine you could watch a film of your life, from birth to death. What would it take for you to jump out of your chair, start pumping your fists in the air, and shout, Yes, this is it! This is a good life! This is a life well lived!?

How do you live a good life? By defining a philosophy for living. A philosophy is nothing more than some simple rules for yourself. If you have a grasp on how the world works and have a sense of how to behave toward others, you have a philosophy of life. It is a framework, a backbone, a set of principles or guidelines that give your life direction and prevent drift.

It is never too late to get smarter or be better. Whether you just came out of a coma, emerged from self-isolation, or are just out poking around the bookstore, you are blessed with life and you are one of the luckiest people to have ever drawn a breath. It is up to you to make the most of your time here. We say, you only live once, but truthfully, you live every dayyou only die once.

Every day is an opportunity to examine your life, to be inspired, to take small actions, and make improvements and corrections that will steer you toward the goal of being a good person. My life has been greatly enhanced by applying the principles of Stoic wisdom. The simplicity of the philosopher Epictetuss quote, If you make beautiful choices, so too, will you be, reverberated through me like a firecracker in a cymbal factory.

I have distilled the practical wisdom of the Stoics into a book of breezy letters to my son. I do some of my best communicating in letters, and I hope to set off an explosion in you, too. If your ultimate goal is to stand up and cheer for your life, the journey begins with a philosophy.

Life doesnt give you a manual. But it does give you a mother.

Thank you for reading this far.

Sincerely,

The Author

P.S. The margin is an ancient device found even in very early written scrolls. Its original purpose was not legibility or doodling; that came later. The margin was used because of the appetites of the rodents that would gnaw and eat the edges of paper.

Dear Jack,

I am writing to you from a body that once carried the promise of yours. Now, when I embrace you, it feels like I am hugging a bicycle: all muscle and bone, sinew and angles. The sharp blades of your shoulders, the stony protuberances of your elbows, the xylophone of ribs, and the knots of spine are far from the soft squish of the ten-pound newborn who cannonballed out of the business end of the birth canal.