The Art of Living Well

Book excerpt: The Art of Living Well: How to Find Joy and Love Your Life details a path to increased creativity, compassion, and joyfulness. It follows a trail blazed by the sages of western civilization, stopping at four points along the way. The first, the Oracle of Delphi - the Holiest of the Holies in the ancient Greek world - greets us with the words emblazoned on its entryway: "Know Thyself." Through these words we will come to an appreciation that Love stands at the very center of our being. We then meet the words of Polonius, a character in Shakespeare's Hamlet, who advises his son: "To thine own self be true." In this section we will learn to forge the Love we've uncovered into a tool of forgiveness, and we will use it to heal the buried hurts and pains from the past. Freed and bolstered with a newly strengthened sense of self, we next stand before the urgings of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Trust thyself. Here, we will learn how to trust the deepest within ourselves and the deepest in the world. At our last stopping point we find the words of friends and loved ones, not the wisdom of sages. They tell us to be ourselves-words that sound so simple-and we will see that we have developed the exact skills to live this way. The prize for our efforts is the art of living well: we will be able to find joy and love life in all of our various settings and roles. The author applies his more than thirty years as a physician, educator and striver in laying out an approach that is available to anyone who is willing to work with heart, mind, and commitment. Inner exercises complement the ideas presented in these pages, allowing readers to find their own insight and discoveries. These pages are available to anyone who feels there is more to life than what is merely seen with the eye."