Category Archives: friends
Not Just My Own Booklist – Part 1
If you are anything like me, you too find chain emails and chain social media posts annoying and easy to ignore. “I know which of my friends will like/love/repost this”. Really? Then you know it won’t be me. “Send this to 10 friends and watch your luck multiply. You will win the lottery soon!” Spare me, please. Don’t make me one of your ten friends and don’t tag me. That has been and is my normal reaction to these time wasters.
But there’s always an exception that proves the rule. Someone came up with a brilliant idea to promote reading and literacy. Simply post the cover of a favorite book for seven days and tag a friend each day to carry on this good work. And just like that, within a matter of mere days, I had created a curated list of fabulous reads! Some, I was lucky enough to have read. Others, I count myself even luckier to have the anticipation of reading.
I now gave myself a task to make a list in one place of all these book lists created by my own circle of friends (including seven from me) both for planning to read myself and to share.
What better way to meet both goals by scribing and sharing on a blog post? Or two.
Just within the small set of friends who participated there were more books than I could share in a single usable, readable blog post so I now have the pleasure of breaking them up into multiple posts.
And when I say “pleasure”, I really do mean it because as I create these consolidated lists, I get to once again explore and savor each book title.
A word or two about the circle of friends who participated…all were women of differing ages and generations and most had a connection to India, as you will also see from the genres of their book selections. Given only seven posts and seven books, all were clearly top of their much loved books, which makes this a gift worth sharing. They are an eclectic assortment indeed…some classics, some not, some fiction, some not. All worth giving a try.
So, here goes, in random order and now with links to more information about each book, for your convenience and enjoyment:
The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh
Autobiography of a Yogi – Paramhansa Yogananda
Being Mortal – Atul Gawande
Wolf of the Plains – Conn Iggulden
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas – John Boyne
Remnants of a Separation – Aanchal Malhotra
11/22/63 – Stephen King
A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
A Search in Secret India – Paul Brunton
Born to Run – Christopher McDougall
The House of Kanooru – Kuvempu
Auschwitz: The Nazis & the ‘Final Solution’ – Laurence Rees
The Elephant Whisperer – Lawrence Anthony
Tiger Hills – Sarita Mandanna
Four Steps From Paradise – Timeri N Murari
On the Origin of Species – Charles Darwin
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
A Passage to Africa – George Alagiah
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
What wondrous world do we live in that we have such bountiful treasure of reading available to us?
P.S. As I said, these are not all there are. There are more treasures to come as I use my friends’ shared book lists and create at least one, may be two, more blog posts.
The Elixir of Life
Some housekeeping items first –
- This is not something I just made up.
- I have provided links to source material below to prove this; I hope you check them out.
- The related TED talk itself has been viewed 13 million times, perhaps even by you…it’s worth viewing again.
- I start with the conclusions because of how interesting they are.
- I focus on the conclusions because of how practical they are.
- I end with the conclusions because of how fruitful they are.
These conclusions have been derived from one of the longest study of people ever conducted – 80 years long with individuals from their teens to their very senior years, supplemented by many others over time.
Fundamentally, the study seeks to answer these questions –
What makes us healthy and happy as we go through life?
And if we were to invest in our future selves, where should we put our time and energy to reap those benefits of health and happiness?
The most intriguing part of this study are in fact the conclusions. Conclusions that have been painstakingly derived from a long and exhaustive process of collecting all manner of information and knowledge about the lives of the participants year after year after year.
And yes, these questions are indeed answered.
The conclusions say that it’s not wealth or work or fame that make you healthy and happy. They’re something else that seem like so much common sense and you wonder if it needed an 80+ year study to determine the answer to this most interesting enigma of life.
Drum roll, please…
The primary conclusion of the study, the answer to that key question is this:
Good relationships are what keep us happier and healthier. Period.
To expand on this conclusion further, there were these additional, interesting findings from this long study:
Social connections are great for us; loneliness kills.
It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they’re physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected.
The quality of your close relationships matter; whether it’s friendship, marriage, community…
Good, warm, satisfying relationships predicated happiness and good health. Those who had such relationships in their 50s grew to be healthier and happier in their 80s.
Good relationships result in not just in good physical health but in good mental health.
They did not just protect bodies but also protected minds with stronger memories versus earlier decline in memories.
Now, that I have given you something super simple and practical to think about practicing, I hope you also read about the study here. And watch this much viewed TED talk (12:40 minutes) on this topic as well. In fact, you can read all about the Harvard Study of Adult Development at their website…which kind of is the point of this post, to make you aware of the long study and its conclusions.
Truly speaking, as simple as all of this sounds, relationships are in fact complex and complicated. Good, strong relationships take effort. But as many of you know, the rewards you reap every day from your efforts are as significant as the efforts that you invest in your relationships. (Or not).
Ultimately, what this study demonstrates is that those rewards are even more impactful and their effects last so much longer than we ever knew or imagined.
So, go forth and invest in those awesome relationships! They bring you joy today and will bring you excellent physical health, mental health and happiness for a long time to come. Cheers!
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
―
The Yin and Yang of Life Anywhere 