Tag: Memoir

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Man’s Search for Meaning

Author: Viktor E. Frankl
Rating: 9/10
Last Read: May 2014

Quick Summary: Viktor Frankl was sent to a concentration camp during WWII.  He discusses his own experiences and those of fellow prisoners, and tries to find the reason that some were able to survive the harsh concentration camps, while others simply gave up and died.  This book is an excellent read and will shift your perspective on the value of having a purpose and a good mental attitude.  

Terrible as it was, his experience in Auschwitz reinforced what was already one of his key ideas: Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.

One thing to note: I remember reading this in China while riding on the bus to Foxconn.  It’s incredibly hard to do work after reading Frankl’s descriptions of being in concentration camps and differentiating those who survived and those who didn’t.  Be aware of the material, and perhaps find a suitable time to read.  This is not bedtime reading material.

There is value is looking into the dark parts of the human condition.  In those parts one can truly find the appreciation for the positive aspects of life, the strength of the will, and the generosity of those whose spirit will not be bent and broken by the dark aspects of the world.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

My Highlights

The forward echoes my own sentiments on the value of a good book:

Typically, if a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person’s life, that alone justifies reading it, rereading it, and finding room for it on one’s shelves. –loc 16

Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” –loc 21

Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. –loc 29

Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. –loc 30

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you. –loc 35

Frankl would have argued that we are never left with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond. –loc 41

We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
HAROLD S. KUSHNER
–loc 55

And now, to Frankl’s own words…

Whereupon I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails. –loc 65

“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.” –loc 81

it will try to answer this question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner? –loc 104

It is easy for the outsider to get the wrong conception of camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity. Little does he know of the hard fight for existence which raged among the prisoners. This was an unrelenting struggle for daily bread and for life itself, for one’s own sake or for that of a good friend. –loc 114

Every man was controlled by one thought only: to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to save his friends. With no hesitation, therefore, he would arrange for another prisoner, another “number,” to take his place in the transport. –loc 127

These former prisoners often say, “We dislike talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will understand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.” –loc 139

In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as “delusion of reprieve.” The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. –loc 187

At that moment I saw the plain truth and did what marked the culminating point of the first phase of my psychological reaction: I struck out my whole former life. –loc 240

Apart from that strange kind of humor, another sensation seized us: curiosity. I have experienced this kind of curiosity before, as a fundamental reaction toward certain strange circumstances. When my life was once endangered by a climbing accident, I felt only one sensation at the critical moment: curiosity, curiosity as to whether I should come out of it alive or with a fractured skull or some other injuries. –loc 264

The prisoner of Auschwitz, in the first phase of shock, did not fear death. Even the gas chambers lost their horrors for him after the first few days—after all, they spared him the act of committing suicide. –loc 292

I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way —an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. –loc 528

I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. –loc 541

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. –loc 610

To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative. –loc 611

(The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?) –loc 839

Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress. –loc 874

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. –loc 875

Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” –loc 886

It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful. –loc 888

An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. –loc 889

Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering. –loc 902

Take the fate of the sick—especially those who are incurable. I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now—he wrote—fate was offering him a similar chance. –loc 903

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.’” –loc 916

The unemployed worker, for example, is in a similar position. His existence has become provisional and in a certain sense he cannot live for the future or aim at a goal. –loc 936

Instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. –loc 955

What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? —“Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. –loc 978

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. –loc 1018

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden. –loc 1026

Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naïve query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value. For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying. –loc 1031

“Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben.” (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from –loc 1086

The body has fewer inhibitions than the mind. –loc 1156

Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-centered psychotherapy.) –loc 1236

According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man. –loc 1244

Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a “secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning. –loc 1248

The term “existential” may be used in three ways: to refer to (1) existence itself, i.e., the specifically human mode of being; (2) the meaning of existence; and (3) the striving to find a concrete meaning in personal existence, that is to say, the will to meaning. –loc 1268

A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. –loc 1292

Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. –loc 1315

No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism). –loc 1335

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. Now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom. –loc 1339

Let us consider, for instance, “Sunday neurosis,” that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest. –loc 1343

This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” –loc 1371

Such a precept confronts him with life’s finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself. –loc 1374

By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. –loc 1385

It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. –loc 1387

The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. –loc 1388

Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. –loc 1391

The second way of finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something—such as goodness, truth and beauty—by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness—by loving him. –loc 1394

Thus love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love. –loc 1404

For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. –loc 1408

When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves. –loc 1409

suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. –loc 1416

“our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.” –loc 1425

I observed that procreation is not the only meaning of life, for then life in itself would become meaningless, and something which in itself is meaningless cannot be rendered meaningful merely by its perpetuation. –loc 1491

Logotherapy bases its technique called “paradoxical intention” on the twofold fact that fear brings about that which one is afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes impossible what one wishes. –loc 1544

Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips. –loc 1664

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to “be happy.” –loc 1714

One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. –loc 1716

Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering. –loc 1725

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now. –loc 1857

From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past—the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized—and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past. –loc 1864

Frankl was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life. He wrote the response on paper and asked his students to guess what he had written. After some moments of quiet reflection, a student surprised Frankl by saying, “The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.”
“That was it, exactly,” Frankl said. “Those are the very words I had written.” –loc 2057

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One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer

Author: Nathaniel C. Fink
Rating: 9/10
Last Read: June 2014

Quick Summary: This book recounts Fink’s journey through Marine Corps officer training and his experiences with war in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Fink shares some of the leadership training that he gained during his schooling and leadership roles in the USMC.  

While I don’t normally recommend books about war for those who are not interested, in this case I will do the opposite.  It takes me back to the years I spent in ROTC receiving similar training (with much lower stakes) – many people in leadership roles do not carry the same ideals or perspectives that the USMC instills in its leaders. There is much wisdom to be gained in the USMC leadership principles, and I think this book showcases some practical examples of their application.

My Highlights

We should remember that one man is much the same as another, and that he is best who is trained in the severest school.
—THUCYDIDES

“I saw a bumper sticker in the parking lot that said ‘Nobody ever drowned in sweat.’” –loc 127

Olds explained that orders slowly executed meant advantages lost. –loc 200

I wanted to be there, and I tried hard. For the first time in my life, desire and effort wouldn’t be enough. I was learning that in the Marines, the only easy day was yesterday. Success the day before meant nothing, and tomorrow might never happen. I woke up each morning at Quantico wondering whether I’d still be there that night. –loc 285

But in combat, we were told, there’s rarely time for discussion and debate. Complex ideas must be made simple, or they’ll remain ideas and never be put into action. –loc 308

We drilled them, and every other list, over and over again. I memorized them in the classroom, in line at the chow hall, and in my rack at night. The purpose, we were promised, was to make them instinctive. They would become innate to our decision-making process and infuse everything we did without even a conscious thought. –loc 310

“First,” he counseled, “you must be technically and tactically proficient.” There was no excuse for not knowing everything about the weapon, radio, aircraft, or whatever else it was you were trying to use. “Being a nice guy is great, but plenty of nice guys have gotten half their Marines killed because they didn’t know their jobs. –loc 355

A good plan violently executed now, he urged, was better than a great plan later. Be decisive, act, and be ready to adapt. –loc 359

“Fourth, know your men and look out for their welfare.” Fanning smiled as he remembered Marines he’d served with. They will, he said, follow you through the gates of hell if they trust you truly care about them. “This is not about you.” Fanning spoke the sentence slowly, emphasizing each word. He explained that the Corps existed for the enlisted infantryman. “Everyone else—you aspiring infantry officers included—is only support. –loc 364

From that afternoon on, I accepted the rules and lived by them. When getting dressed by the numbers, I tried to move faster and yell louder than anyone else. When Olds made me call cadence, I did it with heart and never backed down. He stopped caring that my calls confused the platoon. Marching didn’t matter. It was about cool under pressure. It was about detachment. We had to retain our ability to think when the world was crumbling around us. Not for ourselves, but for our Marines. –loc 374

His message was clear: you need discipline most when it’s hardest to muster—when you’re tired, hungry, outside your comfort zone. –loc 456

Being a Marine was not about money for graduate school or learning a skill; it was a rite of passage in a society becoming so soft and homogenized that the very concept was often sneered at. –loc 549

The Corps teaches three fundamentals of marksmanship: sight picture, bone support, and natural point of aim. –loc 571

The third element, natural point of aim, is the most important. With each of the shooter’s breaths, the rifle muzzle rises. It settles with exhalation back to a natural resting point between breaths—the natural point of aim. Make the bull’s-eye your natural point of aim, squeeze the trigger near the bottom of your breath, and you’ll hit the target. –loc 573

We learned the six troop-leading procedures by the acronym BAMCIS. Begin planning. Arrange for reconnaissance. Make reconnaissance. Complete the plan. Issue the order. Supervise. –loc 605

SMEAC: situation, mission, execution, administration and logistics, command and signal. –loc 608

Speed, we were taught, is a weapon. Be aggressive. Keep the tempo high. –loc 616

We learned that indecision is a decision, that inaction has a cost all its own. Good commanders act and create opportunities. Great commanders ruthlessly exploit those opportunities and throw the enemy into disarray. –loc 617

We learned that the Corps relies on mission-type orders: “Tell me what to do, not how to do it.” –loc 621

Decentralize command and allow subordinates to operate freely within the framework of the commander’s intent. –loc 621

I remembered the “80 percent solution”—a good plan now was better than a perfect plan later. We had crossed the threshold of action. This was enough information to do the job; now the task was to do it. –loc 684

Leaders have an ethical responsibility to serve as buffers, protecting their subordinates, and a moral obligation to act from the courage of their own convictions. The moral courage of their leaders is what separates combat units from armed mobs. –loc 765

He explained that Americans, especially young American men, exhibit posturing behavior. Two guys in a bar bump chests, get up in each other’s faces, and yell. If a fight follows, it’s about honor, saving face. That’s posturing. Marines on the battlefield must exhibit predatory behavior. In that bar, a predator would smile politely at his opponent, wait for him to turn around, and then cave in the back of his skull with a barstool. –loc 786

He identified five things an infantry leader can do to help maintain the psychiatric effectiveness of his men in combat: minimize fatigue by sleeping whenever possible, build confidence as a team, encourage communication, use spare time to practice emergency medical training, and do after-action critiques to address the shock of combat and killing. –loc 807

“Your Marines will expect four things from you: competence, courage, consistency, and compassion.” –loc 879

The last thing they needed was a Pattonesque monologue from a newborn lieutenant, so I introduced myself and said I was happy to be the newest member of the platoon. I told them I wanted to meet with each man individually over the coming week and asked if they had any questions for me. There were none. Staff Sergeant Marine dismissed them, and they headed back to the armory. I thought I heard approval in his voice as we walked back to the office. “No bullshit, sir. Marines appreciate that.” –loc 993

“If safety were paramount,” Whitmer declared, “we’d stay in the barracks and play pickup basketball. Good training is paramount.” Whitmer’s idea of good training reminded me of something I’d read about the Roman legions—their exercises were bloodless battles so that their battles were bloody exercises. –loc 1002

Captain Whitmer replied that we, as infantry officers, had been trained to be aggressive. Nods all around. “But there’s a fine line between aggressive and foolish.” Good commanders, he explained, could operate right at that line, without crossing it. We had to know the difference between a risk and a gamble. All commanders take risks. They are calculated decisions to make gains in a dangerous environment. Gambles are pure chance—closing your eyes and running the gauntlet. –loc 1024

even if they had a low CDI factor. I took the bait. “What’s CDI?” “Chicks dig it, sir. Football team: high CDI. Chess club: low CDI. Platoon sergeant: high CDI. Mortar section: low CDI. Doesn’t matter that mortars have all the firepower. Life’s unfair. Didn’t they teach you that in college?” –loc 1078

‘Never regret not doing a real mission. Now you can have all golden memories and no ghosts.’ I –loc 1096

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places,” Hemingway wrote. –loc 1151

“But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” –loc 1152

Past deeds are a young Marine’s source of pride, inspiration to face danger, and reassurance that death in battle isn’t consignment to oblivion. His buddies and all future Marines will keep the faith. Some people in my life would call that naivete, but I was coming to know it as esprit de corps. –loc 1164

I climbed up to Captain Whitmer’s cabin, to let him know his officers were all aboard. I found him sitting at his desk, wearing sweatpants and looking relaxed. His incense burner smoldered, and acoustic guitar played softly in the background. This was Captain Whitmer at his best, embodying the line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem about keeping your head when all around you are losing theirs. Yes, he knew about the attacks. Yes, he expected we’d be sailing earlier than planned. No, he saw no need for concern. –loc 1201

Captain Whitmer was too self-effacing to say it, but I knew the answer. Among the battalion’s company commanders, he was the iconoclast, the outcast stepchild who trained his Marines to be good instead of look good. He pushed us hard, questioned authority, and couldn’t even feign obsequiousness. –loc 1343

It is a central tenet of the Marines’ war-fighting philosophy that each subordinate must provide options to his boss—tell him what you can do, rather than what you can’t. Depending on the situation, two or three or four courses of action would be developed and then roughed out into basic operational plans. –loc 1361

Hardness was the ability to face an overwhelming situation with aplomb, smile calmly at it, and then triumph through sheer professional pride. –loc 2327

The pilot had requested the most favored method for guiding a helicopter into a landing zone in the dark. The NATO-Y, standard throughout the Western militaries, is four chem lights tied to premeasured lengths of parachute cord. When laid on the ground and pulled taut, they form a Y. One of the Marines pulled it out, already tied, and cracked the four chem lights. He laid them across the landing zone, with the base pointing into the wind and the two legs marking touchdown points for the helicopter’s main landing gear. –loc 2581

I remembered a story I’d heard from General Jones, the commandant who’d eaten dinner with us on the Peleliu. He’d quoted a former Marine officer who went on to be a Fortune 500 CEO. When asked for his guiding principle, the CEO replied, “Officers eat last.” The philosophy is simple, and it goes a long way. –loc 2907

Winning a firefight requires quick action by leaders. The key is to make decisions about your enemy and act on them faster than he is acting on decisions made about you. –loc 2917

In training, I was taught the OODA loop, a four-stage decision-making process described by Air Force fighter pilot Colonel John Boyd: observe, orient, decide, act. –loc 2918

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon. –loc 3082

“Well, sir,” Person said, turning in the seat to face me, oblivious to the fight all around him, “I guess I’m fighting for cheap gas and a world without ragheads blowing up our fucking buildings.”
“Good to know you’re such an idealist.”
“That world sounds pretty ideal to me right about now.”
–loc 4051

I remembered General Conway’s instruction back in Kuwait: “Your first obligation as an officer is the defense of your men.” –loc 4238

“Howdy, sir. How you doin’ this evening?” Espera said.
“Never better. Tired, cold, wet, hungry. I feel like a Marine.”
–loc 4274

“Last time I saw you in a cold hole, LT, was in Afghanistan. Makes me feel like an old campaigner.”
“Regular warhorse, Espera. Just wait. Next year it’ll be Syria, then North Korea, and who knows where after that. We’ll never have to train again. Just war, war, war.”
–loc 4276

I ached for him. No one knows the costs of war better than the grunts. I guessed the television news that night was full of reports of collateral damage and civilian casualties. I wished people could see how much we agonized over our decisions and prayed they were the right ones. These choices didn’t always translate into hesitation on the trigger or racking self-doubt, but sometimes it was enough to sit awake in the cold rain just thinking about them. –loc 4282

“Never pet a burning dog.” –loc 4335

Gunny Wynn’s priority as platoon sergeant, first and always, was the safety of his men. Mine, as platoon commander, was accomplishing our mission. –loc 4341

Gunny Wynn and the team leaders systematically strengthened the plan, pointing out weaknesses and suggesting improvements. It is a simple fact of human nature that people will more willingly go into danger when they have a say in crafting their fate. –loc 4347

Ironically, I remembered Colonel Ferrando’s words from a briefing the day before: “You can’t volunteer to go to war and then bitch about getting shot at.” –loc 4406

Strong combat leadership is never by committee. Platoon commanders must command, and command in battle isn’t based on consensus. It’s based on consent. –loc 4538

Any leader wields only as much authority and influence as is conferred by the consent of those he leads. –loc 4539

What’s past is past, but the present and future will kill you. –loc 4560

I finally understood why Whitmer had threatened us that night. Commanders always bear the heaviest responsibility. When you’re tired and under stress, your efforts to convey that gravitas can come out all wrong. –loc 4568

“The sacred geometry of chance, sir.”
“I like that.”
“Espera and I talked about it earlier. We can do a lot to influence the outcome, but sometimes it’s out of our hands,” Rudy said, then mimed firing a rifle. “A running man shoots a burst into a moving Humvee. Why do some miss? Why do some hit? Why a flesh wound and not a femoral artery? Aim and skill have nothing to do with it. The difference between life and death out here is seconds and millimeters—the sacred geometry of chance.” –loc 4599

After all, I would be right there at the front, in as much danger as anyone, sometimes more. An instructor at Quantico had told me that officers got paid to be gophers: when all the sane people were burrowing in the dirt, it was an officer’s job to poke his head up and see what was happening. –loc 5368

Anyone who looks with anguish on evils so great must acknowledge the tragedy of it all; and if anyone experiences them without anguish, his condition is even more tragic, since he remains serene by losing his humanity. —AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO –loc 5870

I left the Corps because I had become a reluctant warrior. Many Marines reminded me of gladiators. They had that mysterious quality that allows some men to strap on greaves and a breastplate and wade into the gore. I respected, admired, and emulated them, but I could never be like them. I could kill when killing was called for, and I got hooked on the rush of combat as much as any man did. But I couldn’t make the conscious choice to put myself in that position again and again throughout my professional life. –loc 5923

Great Marine commanders, like all great warriors, are able to kill that which they love most—their men. It’s a fundamental law of warfare. Twice I had cheated it. I couldn’t tempt fate again. –loc 5926

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Love is a Mixtape

Author: Rob Sheffield
Rating: 10/10
Last Read: February 2015

Quick Summary:  A music journalist for the Rolling Stone writes a book about his relationship with the love of his life.  Each chapter has a playlist, and the songs that are picked are intertwined into his retelling of their life story.  

The book opens telling you that this is not a happy story – it’s the story of how he found love and then lost it due to a tragic death.  As he’s spinning the tale of their love, you manage to forget this fact – until the terrible event happens and you feel the deep pang of loss (“how could this happen to them?!”).

I have a deep appreciation for this book – music is equally important to me and equally intertwined in my life. Losing the music is a tragic thing.

My Highlights

It was a smashing time, and then it ended, because that’s what times do. –loc 141

Renée loved to do things. That was mysterious to me, since I was more comfortable talking about things and never doing them. –loc 149

Tonight, I feel like my whole body is made out of memories. I’m a mix tape, a cassette that’s been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape. –loc 171

A song nobody likes is a sad thing. But a love song nobody likes is hardly a thing at all. –loc 188

There are millions of songs in the world, and millions of ways to connect them into mixes. Making the connections is part of the fun of being a fan. –loc 295

Walter Benjamin, in his prescient 1923 essay “One Way Street,” said a book was an outdated means of communication between two boxes of index cards. One professor goes through books, looking for tasty bits he can copy onto index cards. Then he types his index cards up into a book, so other professors can go through it and copy tasty bits onto their own index cards. Benjamin’s joke was: Why not just sell the index cards? –loc 301

I’d rather hear a Frank Sinatra song between Run-DMC and Bananarama than between two other Frank Sinatra songs. When you stick a song on a tape, you set it free. –loc 307

Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life. –loc 335

It was a painful night, but I got the message: Let the dancing girls dance. That’s the one ironclad rule of pop muzik, whether in New York, London, Paris, or Munich, and I’m just lucky I learned it so early. I had always been taught to fear disco, and to fear the disco inside me. But by the second verse of “Bad Girls,” it was obvious everything I knew was wrong. “Toot toot, beep beep” was meaningful on a much deeper level than I could have fathomed. –loc 440

It’s this kind of syndrome—where if a guy sees his girlfriend likin’ somebody, that’s called ‘bitch power.’ Like Elvis Presley was hated by men, hated, ’cause he had bitch power. Teddy Pendergrass has bitch power. I just found out that I have a little bitch power. But beyond bitch power, I have something else, that men like—and that’s the truth, and the down-to-earth shit, OK? So men don’t mind bringin’ their women to see me, ’cause I have bitch power but it’s in another way. –loc 448

How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people? How do you jump off one moving train, marked Yourself, and jump onto a train moving in the opposite direction, marked Everybody Else? –loc 620

Sometimes you lie in a strange room, in a strange person’s home, and you feel yourself bending out of shape. –loc 765

Is there any scarier word than “irreversible”? It’s a hiss of a word, full of side effects and mutilations. Severe tire damage—no backing up. –loc 774

Girls take up a lot of room. –loc 792

I thought, There is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment. I could count the places I would not rather be. I’ve always wanted to see New Zealand, but I’d rather be here. The majestic ruins of Machu Picchu? I’d rather be here. A hillside in Cuenca, Spain, sipping coffee and watching leaves fall? Not even close. There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what hell she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is this girl’s hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else. –loc 839

I kept thinking of an old Robert Mitchum cowboy movie where he goes back to see the farmhouse where he was born and finds the house falling apart and an old man living in it by himself. “Lonely place,” Robert Mitchum says. The old man says, “Nothing wrong with a lonely place as long as it’s private. That’s why I never married. Marriage is lonely, but it ain’t private.” –loc 946

Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten. –loc 1073

The songs were all either fast or sad, because all songs should be either fast or sad. Some of the fast ones were sad, too. –loc 1122

“Honey, is this song about us?” the strategic answer is, “Yes, but so is ‘Just Like Heaven.’” –loc 1250

“If it’s got tits or tires, it’s gonna cost you money.” –loc 1284

Chuck Berry the night he decided to mix country with the blues, –loc 1399

I suddenly realized how much being a husband was about fear: fear of not being able to keep somebody safe, of not being able to protect somebody from all the bad stuff you want to protect them from. Knowing they have more tears in them than you will be able to keep them from crying. –loc 1439

Every time I started to cry, I remembered how Renée used to say real life was a bad country song, except bad country songs are believable and real life isn’t. –loc 1747

I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language. –loc 1825

You lose a certain kind of innocence when you experience this type of kindness. You lose your right to be a jaded cynic. You can no longer go back through the looking glass and pretend not to know what you know about kindness. It’s a defeat, in a way. –loc 1912

Human benevolence is totally unfair. We don’t live in a kind or generous world, yet we are kind and generous. We know the universe is out to burn us, and it gets us all the way it got Renée, but we don’t burn each other, not always. –loc 1944

One day, you’re in a physical landscape you share with this bizarre and fundamentally alien creature, not alien because she’s female but alien because you’re a fool in love and there’s nothing not alien about that. And then when she’s gone, you’re alone and all the strangeness and wonder have gone out of the landscape and you’re still a fool but now nobody notices how many days in a row you wear the same socks and cleaning the shower doesn’t make the girl smile anymore so everything smells a little worse and doesn’t get fixed when it breaks. –loc 2049

But all the things you want to learn from grief turn out to be the total opposite of what you actually learn. There are no revelations, no wisdoms as a trade-off for the things you have lost. You just get stupider, more selfish. Colder and grimmer. You forget your keys. You leave the house and panic that you won’t remember where you live. You know less than you ever did. You keep crossing thresholds of grief and you think, Maybe this one will unveil some sublime truth about life and death and pain. But on the other side, there’s just more grief. –loc 2181

It’s not human to let go of love, even when it’s dead. –loc 2187

Ralph Waldo Emerson knew the score: “I grieve that grief can teach me nothing.” That’s from “Experience,” his late essay about human loss and his son’s death. –loc 2195

It’s the same with people who say, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn’t kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you incredibly annoying.

Sometimes great tunes happen to bad times, and when the bad time is over, not all the tunes get to move on with you. –loc 2294

It was strange to fall back in love with really old songs, or to hear them for the first time and not get to hear Renée sing along with them. –loc 2390

I realize that I will never fully understand the millions of bizarre ways that music brings people together. –loc 2438

After Renée died, I assumed the rest of my life would be just a consolation prize. I would keep living, and keep having new experiences, but none of them would compare to the old days. I would have to settle for a lonely life I didn’t want, which would always remind me of the life I couldn’t have anymore. But it didn’t turn out that way, and there’s something strange and upsetting about that. –loc 2450

sometimes I think, man, all the people I get to hear this song with, we’re going to miss each other when we die. When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other. –loc 2504

But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies. –loc 2511

The cassette is full of tape hiss and room tone; it’s full of wasted space, unnecessary noise. –loc 2511

But the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape. –loc 2533

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On the Move

Author: Oliver Sacks
Rating: 9/10
Last Read: September 2015

Quick Summary:  Autobiography of the late Dr. Oliver Sacks, writing about his career, growth, struggles, and thoughts as he revisited his life. Dr. Sacks is a wise man who has been through much in life – and there is much humanity to be gleaned from the pages of this book.

I recommend Maria Popova’s review.

Recommended Reads: Gratitude

My Takeaways

Life was (and probably still is) very difficult for LGBT individuals in ways that I have not considered.

The history of a thing is just as important as the recent developments.  It is hard to continue forward if you are not sure where you came from.

Everybody has their struggles, and even those who have achieved much in life struggle in ways you wouldn’t expect – such as being addicted to amphetamines.

As Dr. Sacks recounts a tale of Einstein and humanity, so to does he reveal his humanity by giving a frank and honest recounting of his life.

Aubrey recounted with a smile, he and a colleague from the Israeli consulate visited Einstein in his house in Princeton. Einstein invited them in and courteously asked if they would like coffee, and (thinking that an assistant or housekeeper would make it), Aubrey said yes. But he was “horrified,” as he put it, when Einstein trotted into the kitchen himself. They soon heard the clatter of cups and pots and an occasional piece of crockery falling, as the great man, in his friendly but slightly clumsy way, made the coffee for them. This, more than anything, Aubrey said, showed him the human and endearing side of the world’s greatest genius.

My Highlights

We think of science as discovery, art as invention, but is there a “third world” of mathematics, which is somehow, mysteriously, both? –loc 295

one day, with my heart in my mouth, I told Richard that I was in love with him, not knowing how he would react. He hugged me, gripped my shoulders, and said, “I know. I am not that way, but I appreciate your love and love you too, in my own way.” –loc 343

“Travel now by all means—if you have the time. But travel the right way, the way I travel. I am always reading and thinking of the history and geography of a place. I see its people in terms of these, placed in the social framework of time and space. Take the prairies, for example; you’re wasting your time visiting these unless you know the saga of the homesteaders, the influence of law and religion at different times, the economic problems, the difficulties of communication, and the effects of successive mineral finds. –loc 708

When you were born, people congratulated us on what they considered a wonderful family of four sons! Where are you all now? I feel lonely and bereft. Ghosts inhabit this house. When I go into the various rooms I feel overcome with a sense of loss. –loc 779

These and a host of other memories of your vital personality will always remain with us. When we contemplate this large empty house, we feel a wrench at our heart and a deep sense of loss. We realize nevertheless that you have to make your way in the world, and with you must rest the ultimate decision! –loc 786

I wondered whether systems in the brain concerned with the perception (or projection) of meaning, significance, and intentionality, systems underlying a sense of wonder and mysteriousness, systems for appreciation of the beauty of art and science, had lost their balance in schizophrenia, producing a mental world overcharged with intense emotion and distortions of reality. These systems had lost their middle ground, it seemed, so that any attempt to titrate them, damp them down, could tip the person from a pathologically heightened state to one of great dullness, a sort of mental death. –loc 884

It was at Mount Zion that Libet performed his astounding experiments showing that if subjects were asked to make a fist or perform another voluntary action, their brains would register a “decision” nearly half a second before there was any conscious decision to act. While his subjects felt that they had consciously and of their own free will made a movement, their brains had made a decision, seemingly, long before they did. –loc 1302

I sometimes annoyed the group, I think, by saying that we should also discuss the writings of our nineteenth-century forebears, relating what we were seeing in patients to their observations and thoughts. This was seen by the others as archaism; we were short of time, and we had better things to do than consider such “obsolete” matters. This attitude was reflected, implicitly, in many of the journal articles we read; they made little reference to anything more than five years old. It was as if neurology had no history. –loc 1379

I found this dismaying, for I think in narrative and historical terms. As a chemistry-mad boy, I devoured books on the history of chemistry, the evolution of its ideas, and the lives of my favorite chemists. Chemistry had, for me, a historical and human dimension too. –loc 1383

I was not a book collector myself, and when I bought books or articles, it was to read them, not to show them. –loc 1392

I felt that I was enjoying California too much, was getting addicted to an easy, sleazy life, to say nothing of a deepening drug addiction. I felt I needed to go to a hard, real place, a place where I could devote myself to work and perhaps discover or create a real identity, a voice of my own. –loc 1760

I sometimes wonder why I have spent more than fifty years in New York, when it was the West, and especially the Southwest, which so enthralled me. I now have many ties in New York—to my patients, my students, my friends, and my analyst—but I have never felt it move me the way California did. I suspect my nostalgia may be not only for the place itself but for youth, and a very different time, and being in love, and being able to say, “The future is before me.” –loc 1773

But then the feeling started to fade. We asked ourselves whether the experience we had shared was real, authentic, given the huge aphrodisiac thrust of the amphetamines. I found this question particularly humiliating—could so lofty a transport as falling in love be reduced to something purely physiological? –loc 1908

I asked Shengold if I too was schizophrenic. “No,” he answered. Was I then, I asked, “merely neurotic”? “No,” he answered. I left it there, we left it there, and there it has been left for the last forty-nine years. –loc 1982

I would continue to seek satisfaction in drugs, I felt, unless I had satisfying—and, hopefully, creative—work. It was crucial for me to find something with meaning, and this, for me, was seeing patients. –loc 1987

We maintain the proprieties—he is always “Dr. Shengold,” and I am always “Dr. Sacks”—but it is because the proprieties are there that there can be such freedom of communication. And this is something I also feel with my own patients. They can tell me things, and I can ask things, which would be impermissible in ordinary social intercourse. –loc 2000

Above all, Dr. Shengold has taught me about paying attention, listening to what lies beyond consciousness or words. –loc 2002

For me, this was an example of how unconscious motives may sometimes ally themselves to physiological propensities, of how one cannot abstract an ailment or its treatment from the whole pattern, the context, the economy of someone’s life. –loc 2028

This painful story—painful on both sides—is not an uncommon one: an older man, a father figure, and his youthful son-in-science find their roles reversed when the son starts to outshine the father. This happened with Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday—Davy first giving every encouragement to Faraday, then trying to block his career. I am no Faraday, and Friedman was no Davy, but I think the same deadly dynamic was at work, at a much humbler level. –loc 2143

I did not feel she used the word “Darling” lightly; I felt very loved by her, and I loved her intensely too, and this was a love without ambivalence, without conditionality. Nothing I could say could repel or shock her; there seemed no limit to her powers of sympathy and understanding, the generosity and spaciousness of her heart. –loc 2169

I mentioned to her, a couple of months later, that I had been in a depression. “I know we all suffer them at times,” Len wrote. “Well, don’t have any more. You’ve got so much in your favour—brains, charm, presentability, a sense of the ridiculous, and a whole gaggle of us who believe in you.” –loc 2220

“Your Dr. Friedman,” she wrote in October of 1967, “sounds a most unpleasant piece of work, but don’t let him get under your skin. Keep hold of your faith in yourself.” –loc 2255

As one grows older, the years seem to blur into one another, but 1972 remains sharply etched in my memory. –loc 2500

It seems to me that I discover my thoughts through the act of writing, in the act of writing. Occasionally, a piece comes out perfectly, but more often my writings need extensive pruning and editing, because I may express the same thought in many different ways. –loc 2581

As the decorous stranger discreetly retired, I asked Wystan how he experienced the world, whether he thought of it as being a very small or very large place. “Neither,” he replied. “Neither large nor small. Cozy, cozy.” He added in an undertone, “Like home.” –loc 2708

Informally (I sometimes think) I see and learn and do a great deal, with the extremely varied patients I see in various clinics and Homes, and every seeing-and-learning-and-doing situation is, eo ipso, a teaching situation. I find every patient I see, everywhere, vividly alive, interesting and rewarding; I have never seen a patient who didn’t teach me something new, or stir in me new feelings and new trains of thought; and I think that those who are with me in these situations share in, and contribute to, this sense of adventure. (I regard all neurology, everything, as a sort of adventure!) –loc 3130

“You care, you really care for me!” “Of course,” Eric said. “How could you doubt it?” But it was not easy to believe that anyone cared for me; I sometimes failed to realize, I think, how much my parents cared for me. It is only now, reading the letters they wrote to me when I came to America fifty years ago, that I see how deeply they did care. –loc 3232

And perhaps how deeply many others have cared for me—was the imagined lack of caring by others a projection of something deficient or inhibited in myself? –loc 3235

When Lennie learned of this, she felt that life with intravenous nourishment and a spreading cancer was not worthwhile. She resolved to stop eating, though she would take water. My father insisted she be seen by a psychiatrist, but the psychiatrist said, “She is the sanest person I have ever seen. You must respect her decision.” –loc 3246

Dearest Len, We have all of us been hoping so intensely that this month would see your return to health; but, alas! this was not to be. My heart is torn when I hear of your weakness, your misery—and, now, your longing to die. You, who have always loved life, and been such a source of strength and life to so many, can face death, even choose it, with serenity and courage, mixed, of course, with the grief of all passing. We, I, can much less bear the thought of losing you. You have been as dear to me as anyone in this world. I shall hope against hope that you may weather this misery, and be restored again to the joy of full living. But if this is not to be, I must thank you—thank you, once again, and for the last time, for living—for being you. Love, Oliver –loc 3254

When I visited Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., (it is the only university in the world for deaf and hearing-impaired students) and talked about the “hearing impaired,” one of the deaf students signed, “Why don’t you look at yourself as sign impaired?” –loc 3605

He has one of the most spacious, thoughtful minds I have ever encountered, with a vast base of knowledge of every sort, but it is a base under continual questioning and scrutiny. (I have seen him suddenly stop in mid-sentence and say, “I no longer believe what I was about to say.”) –loc 3697

I think we all live in a swirl of anecdotes…. We (most of us) compose our lives into narratives…. I wonder what the origin is of the urge to “compose” oneself. –loc 3781

I found you so talented, but so deficient in one quality—just the most important quality—call it humanity, or sympathy, or something like that. And, frankly, I despaired of your ever becoming a good writer, because I didn’t see how one could be taught such a quality…. Your deficiency of sympathy made for a limitation of your observation…. What I didn’t know was that the growth of sympathies is something frequently delayed till one’s thirties. –loc 3826

I am however a rather derivative poet. I learn what I can from whom I can. I borrow heavily from my reading, because I take my reading seriously. It is part of my total experience and I base most of my poetry on my experience. –loc 3857

There is a danger, when old friends meet, that they will talk mostly of the past. –loc 3860

At worst, one is in motion; and at best, Reaching no absolute, in which to rest, One is always nearer by not keeping still. –loc 3866

Aubrey recounted with a smile, he and a colleague from the Israeli consulate visited Einstein in his house in Princeton. Einstein invited them in and courteously asked if they would like coffee, and (thinking that an assistant or housekeeper would make it), Aubrey said yes. But he was “horrified,” as he put it, when Einstein trotted into the kitchen himself. They soon heard the clatter of cups and pots and an occasional piece of crockery falling, as the great man, in his friendly but slightly clumsy way, made the coffee for them. This, more than anything, Aubrey said, showed him the human and endearing side of the world’s greatest genius. –loc 4090

And in its broadest sense, neural Darwinism implies that we are destined, whether we wish it or not, to a life of particularity and self-development, to make our own individual paths through life. –loc 5111

Posted on

The Other Wes Moore

Author: Wes Moore
Rating: 7/10
Last Read: 2014

Quick Summary: A military officer analyzes the lives and actions of himself and an inmate sharing his name to try to determine what would have caused their lives to deviate in such a way.

Key Takeaways

Don’t forget how much of an effect environment, family, and birth lottery have on your life.

It made me think deeply about the way privilege and preference work in the world, and how many kids who didn’t have “luck” like mine in this instance would find themselves forever outside the ring of power and prestige. So many opportunities in this country are apportioned in this arbitrary and miserly way, distributed to those who already have the benefit of a privileged legacy.

My Highlights

But even the worst decisions we make don’t necessarily remove us from the circle of humanity.

life and death, freedom and bondage, hang in the balance of every action we take.

Watende, a Shona word that means “revenge will not be sought,”

“I guess it’s hard sometimes to distinguish between second chances and last chances.”

I decided not to respond directly to this latest protest of his innocence. Instead, I asked a question: “Do you think we’re all just products of our environments?” His smile dissolved into a smirk, with the left side of his face resting at ease. “I think so, or maybe products of our expectations.” “Others’ expectations of us or our expectations for ourselves?” “I mean others’ expectations that you take on as your own.” I realized then how difficult it is to separate the two. The expectations that others place on us help us form our expectations of ourselves.

He also taught me an important lesson about leadership: it always comes with having to make tough decisions.

They believed that excuses were tools of the incompetent and forced every cadet to believe the same.

“When it is time for you to leave this school, leave your job, or even leave this earth, you make sure you have worked hard to make sure it mattered you were ever here.”

Life’s impermanence, I realized, is what makes every single day so precious. It’s what shapes our time here. It’s what makes it so important that not a single moment be wasted.

It made me think deeply about the way privilege and preference work in the world, and how many kids who didn’t have “luck” like mine in this instance would find themselves forever outside the ring of power and prestige. So many opportunities in this country are apportioned in this arbitrary and miserly way, distributed to those who already have the benefit of a privileged legacy.

The common bond of humanity and decency that we share is stronger than any conflict, any adversity, any challenge. Fighting for your convictions is important. But finding peace is paramount. Knowing when to fight and when to seek peace is wisdom.

“I hear you, but it’s not the process you should focus on; it’s the joy you will feel after you go through the process.”

… the incredible power of stories to change people’s lives. By establishing himself as the protagonist of his own story, he inspired me and countless other young people to see ourselves as capable of taking control of our own destinies, and to realize how each decision we make determines the course of our life stories.