Too Soon Old. Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingston, Hachette Australia, 2004.
As a wounded healer and now well over 60 with one son dead from childhood leukaemia and one as a young adult from schizophrenia suicide, the medico author has developed a kind of loving action stoicism to accompany a fairly robust strategy for life. He is interested in the relation between actions and words and suggests that we are not what we think, or what we say, or how we feel: we are what we do. We demonstrate courage in the numberless small ways in which we meet our obligations or reach out to try new things that might improve our lives.
This point is worth making although of course one might want to dig into the four elements of human consciousness and pick up a more nuanced notion of ‘action’ that includes the action of inner choosings about things to dwell on or brood over and things to let go. I think such inner choosings might relate as well to ideas, memories and images that one chooses to allow or not allow purchase in one’s soul.
Livingston writes that the three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love and something to look forward to. I think there needs to be a fourth element and that is someone to connect with.