Harold Kushner Book

[Anonymous]

I have only just started this book, but I am mesmerized by it – I can’t wait to get to the end. Its Harold Kushner’s Overcoming Life’s Disappointments

[Anonymous]

Here are a few of the opening quotes from Kushner – By the way Kushner is a Rabbi – I forgot to mention that earlier.

Quote:

Many of us look at the world and see two groups of people, winners and losers:those who get what they want out of life and those who don’t. But in reality life is more complicated than that. Nobody gets everything he or she yearns for. I look at the world and see three sorts of people: those who dream boldly even as they realize that a lot of their dreams will not come true: those who dream more modestly and fear that even their modest dreams may not be realized; and those who are afraid to dream at all, lest they be disappointed. I would wish for more people who dreamed boldly and trusted their powers of resilience to see them through the inevitable disappointments.

Quote:

History is written by winners, so most history books are about people who win. Most biographies, excluding works of pure scholarship, are meant to inspire as much as to inform, so they focus on the person’s successes.But in real life, even the most successful people see some of their efforts fail and even the greatest of people learn to deal with failure, rejection, bereavement, and serious illness.

From these Kushner lays out his thesis – using Moses as his example he states,

Quote:

But Moses was a man who knew frustration and failure in his public and personal life at least as often and as deeply as he knew fulfillment, and we whose lives are also a mix of fulfillment and disappointment, can learn from his experiences. If he could learn to overcome his monumental disappointments, we can learn to overcome ours.

To me this heady and exciting stuff. I could probably quote the entire book there is so much in it. Definitely worth the read.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for posting this. The book sounds really good. I am really excited about reading wisdom from many different sources. I will have to give this one a look. I am reading Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now,” and feel like I am learning so much from it. I heard about him from people on Stay LDS. So thanks for those references too, to those who posted about him.

[Anonymous]

I knew that name was familiar.

Harold also wrote the book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” So much of what he wrote in there resonated with me.

One thing in particular was the story of Job. According to Harold the story was written by someone attempting to explain why bad things happen to good people. He postulates that Job was probably hitherto known as a famously righteous AND blessed person (like Nephi). The author wanted a story about someone whose righteousness was above question but who still experienced misfortune. The story of Job is MUCH more meaningful for me as a parable.

[Author]

Posts