Book Recommendation: We Learn Nothing by Tim Kreider

I just finished reading We Learn Nothing which is a collection of essays and cartoons by Tim Kreider. I became interested in the book after hearing him interview on RadioLab on NPR. During the interview he shared a story about a friend that basically lead a secret life kept hidden from their group of friends the entire time they knew him (the story is in also in this collection).

Tim Kreider is a satirical cartoonist and his essays are both really funny yet profound. As I was reading though, I realized that the book was basically about human psychology. There was his uncle who suffered from bi-polar disorder, another friend who went through a sex change, and then of course there was the friend with the secret life who was battling severe depression. Even though these characters are dealing with issues that most of us have never experienced, he's somehow able to make it relatable.

Tim himself is a bit of a contradiction. His writing is funny, yet serious, and he's cynical but has hope. He's pretty much a hedonist, still single in his 40s, gets super drunk and is constantly dicking around, like he doesn't care about life or responsibility and yet he obviously spends a lot of time thinking about humanity and meaning.

I really recommend reading it because its both simple yet thought-provoking (and highly entertaining) and I just wanted to share a few excerpts from the book:

About politics: 

"At this point the Tea Party and progressives have more in common with each other than either of us does with moderates: at least we're passionately engaged citizens instead of dull-eyed consumers, and we're both idealogical purists who aren't pushing for reforms so much as a razing of the status quo. The main difference between us is in our preferred villains: the left blames Corporate America for the ruinous state of the union, while the right blames the Government. Not many people on either side seem to have noticed that these alleged antagonists are literally the same people."

About the importance of being non-productive:

"The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration--it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done... Archimedes' "Eureka" in the bath, Newton's apple, Jekyll and Hyde, the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that came in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbrickers, and no-accounts aren't responsible for more of the world's great ideas, inventions, and masterpieces than the hardworking."

About people who don't care about you: 

"You can't tell people, "My friend broke up with me," without sounding like a nine-year-old.... You can give yourself the same ineffectual lecture your parents used to give you as a kid: anyone who'd treat you this way isn't a good friend and doesn't deserve your friendship anyway. But the nine-year-old in you knows that the reason they've ditched you is that you suck."

About not comparing our life to others' life journeys: 

"One of the hardest things to look at is the life we didn't lead, the path not taken, potential left unfulfilled. In stories, those who look back--Lot's wife, Orpheus--are irrevocably lost. Looking to the side instead, to gauge how our companions are faring, is a way of glancing at a safer reflection of what we cannot directly bear, like Perseus seeing the Gorgon safely mirrored in his shield. It's the closest we can get to a glimpse of the parallel universe in which we didn't ruin that relationship years ago, or got that job we applied for, or made that plane at the last minute. So its tempting to read other people's lives as cautionary fables or repudiations of our own, to covet or denigrate them instead of seeing them for what they are: other people's lives, island universes, unknowable."

About happiness: 

"Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that any deliberate campaign to achieve it is so misguided, is that it isn't an obtainable goal in itself but only an aftereffect. It's the consequence of having lived in the way that we're supposed to--by which I don't mean ethically correctly but fully, consciously engaged in the business of living.

It is this state that rock climbers, pinball players, and libertines are all seeking: an absorption in the immediate so intense and complete that the idiot chatter of your brain shuts up for once and you temporarily lose yourself, to your relief."