From Strength to Strength
Book Review (Arthur C. Brooks)
This has been a surprisingly good book.
I say that because I decided to pick it up from not my usual sets of recommendations. I happen to be a life-member of an online fitness community because I bought an all-access pass when they were still small, and this is a long digression to say that I was looking through some of the founders of said company's recommended readings and there were a few titles that piqued my interest.
FS2S is a book about coping with the second half of your life, which fits the founders of this company well. They've done well, succeeded, and now what? But the book is about more than just that, it's really a book about how to be happy, especially as you age.
And Brooks' main contention in the early part of the book is that you will suffer a professional decline far sooner than you think. Which is sobering. He provides some statistics to back this up. The only good news is that if you're an historian, you'll probably hit a career peak in your 70s or 80s.
But, more seriously, part of the reason is that there is fluid intelligence, think you're 20-something cutting-edge researcher, and then there is crystallising intelligence - the ability to take all your knowledge and access it like a knowledgeable Librarian. FI peaks and declines quite quickly, but CI is a second curve, and part of 'succeeding' in the second half of your life is recognising that you need to stop striving and playing the game based on FI, because you are losing; you need to work on playing the game based on CI.
But actually this book then takes a little bit of a left turn. It becomes somewhat less about professional life, and more holistic. And there's quite a liberal sprinkling of references to theologians and other classical and religious authors, enough that I looked up the author's religious background. (Raised evangelical, became a Catholic later in life).
And so he discusses how most of us are addicted to success, and this is even more true the more successful we were; and it truly is a kind of addiction. He talks about how we need to strip away the things we prioritise, using Buddha and Aquinas as his two examples (this is what got me most curious about his own beliefs) - he literally uses Aquinas to discuss the idols in your life and how you should jettison them!
I find chapter 6 one of the most interesting, because it talks about the importance of connection, of relationships vs loneliness, and ties this into the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
The seven (controllable) factors that correlate to being both well and happy in later life are: Not Smoking, Not abusing alcohol, healthy body weight, exercise, adaptive coping style, education, and stable long-term relationships.
The single biggest factor here though is stable long-term relationships. These are the things that mitigate loneliness, and the relationships that 'work' best are romantic partnerships and close relationships. But, as he goes on to argue, it is companionate love not passionate love in romantic relationships that corresponds to lasting happiness. Companionate love depends on familiarity and is long-lasting and stable.
And, he adds, it's not really enough to have your spouse as your one and only true friend. Having 2 or more close friends, rather than just your spouse, is correlated to better life outcomes. Why? It's too much of a burden for a spouse to carry all one's relational needs; it's also a dangerous situation in that if you lose your spouse (through death or divorce), you suddenly have no close friends.
In the successive chapters he goes on to draw on some Indian wisdom about life stages, about cutting things out instead of adding them in; then a discussion about embracing weakness and vulnerability in later life, drawing on the apostle Paul; finally the idea of 'mid life crises', how this is a bit of a myth, but there are important lessons to be learnt about mid and later life 'resets', and how to do that and how to embrace becoming a mentor and elder.
The conclusion of this book is simple; the author tells you that having done all this research, he's also taken the difficult steps that he recommends. Well, that's nice, an author following their own advice. But then he boils it down to seven words: "use things. love people. worship the divine." there's some Augustine and David Foster Wallace there, with a twist of Deuteronomy.
