Blinkist summary of Book by Anne Lamott, 2021 – BOOKS
Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow; Small Victories; Stitches; Some Assembly Required; Grace (Eventually); Plan B; Traveling Mercies; Bird by Bird; Operating Instructions, and the forthcoming Hallelujah Anyway. She is also the author of several novels, including Imperfect Birds and Rosie. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California.
“In Dusk, Night, Dawn, Anne Lamott explores the tough questions that many of us grapple with. How can we recapture the confidence we once had as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? As bad news piles up – from climate crises to daily assaults on civility – how can we cope? Where, she asks, “do we start to get our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back . . . with our sore feet, hearing loss, stiff fingers, poor digestion, stunned minds, broken hearts?”
We begin, Lamott says, by accepting our flaws and embracing our humanity.
Drawing from her own experiences, Lamott shows us the intimate and human ways we can adopt to move through life’s dark places and toward the light of hope that still burns ahead for all of us.
As she does in Help, Thanks, Wow and her other bestselling books, Lamott explores the thorny issues of life and faith by breaking them down into manageable, human-sized questions for readers to ponder, in the process showing us how we can amplify life’s small moments of joy by staying open to love and connection. As Lamott notes in Dusk, Night, Dawn, “I got Medicare three days before I got hitched, which sounds like something an old person might do, which does not describe adorably ageless me.” Marrying for the first time with a grown son and a grandson, Lamott explains that finding happiness with a partner isn’t a function of age or beauty but of outlook and perspective.
Full of the honesty, humor, and humanity that have made Lamott beloved by millions of readers, Dusk, Night, Dawn is classic Anne Lamott – thoughtful and comic, warm and wise – and further proof that Lamott truly speaks to the better angels in all of us.” Amazon
“Dusk, Night, Dawn (2021) is an exploration of the worries and anxieties that keep us up at night. During dark times, it sometimes gets hard to find a reason to keep going. Here you will find help to point you in the right direction, toward hope, self-acceptance, and peace.”
You can start to recover your faith in life by waking up to the present.
“May you live in interesting times.” It’s a saying you might have heard. One that’s probably a little too apt for the present moment! With a new crisis leaping off the front page each day – or lighting up your phone with alerts – it’s never been easier to slip into catastrophe mode.
In the middle of all this turmoil, how do you go on believing that there’s a purpose to life? Or stay hopeful for your children and grandchildren’s futures?
For the author, Anne Lamott, hope blooms in the present. She recalls a fight with her husband that took place not long after they got married – strangely, it was one that happened mostly in her head.
The key message here is: You can start to recover your faith in life by waking up to the present.
You see, the row was really just a back and forth with herself since all her husband was doing was not answering her texts. She was caught up in the noise. But after a phone call with a trusted friend, she came back to the moment and remembered that, above all, her husband is her best friend and that sharing life isn’t always a bed of roses. She was happily married and in love – and this realization quieted the turmoil that had been wrecking her day.
It was a similar feeling to one she’d experienced decades earlier while getting sober from alcohol addiction. Although her body recovered quickly, she found that she still felt disconnected and unmoored from herself, or what she calls “the purest expression” of her being: her soul.
For a time, she’d tarnished her soul with perfectionism, self-hatred, and egotism – the holy trinity of toxicity. But while the soul can be bruised and battered, it remains ever the optimist, always ready to fill with hope.
And so it did. She began to clean up the wreckage of her past by taking tiny actions, like paying her bills and doing the dishes. These tasks helped her to stay firmly grounded in the moment, and she slowly started to love herself.
If you’re facing a similar struggle, it can help to check that your soul still works by tuning into your curiosity. If you feel goodness or presence, know that that’s your soul tapping you on the shoulder, willing you to pay attention. Start with what’s in front of you – a bowl of cherries, perhaps, or a beautiful morning – and savor each moment. Blinkist
Key Ideas:
- Learn how to start believing in and loving yourself.
- You can start to recover your faith in life by waking up to the present.
- Real intimacy means seeing and being seen.
- By changing where you focus your attention, you begin to change your heart.
- No matter how bad things get, you always have enough to keep going.
- Darkness is soothing because it helps you to see the light.
Some quotes from “Dusk, Night, Dawn”
Forgiveness, I know now, is maturity. Mercy is maturity. It’s slow release, like certain medicines. It’s incremental, like traveling along the spiral chambers of a nautilus.
We get to – have to – finally release the perfectionism and expectations, expectations being resentments under construction. We can’t get bogged down in this stupid stuff. It’s actually a miracle just to be here at all, with a few truly great friends, and to keep muddling through, grateful if not sometimes perplexed.
When people know you too well, they eventually see your damage, your weirdness, carelessness, and mean streak. They see how ordinary you are after all, that whatever it was that distinguished you in the beginning is the least of who you actually are. This will turn out to be the greatest gift we can offer another person: letting them see, every so often, beneath all the trappings and pretense to the truth of us.
In the third third of life, you may become just as miserable and prickly as ever, but you cycle through more quickly. You remember other dark nights of the soul and how by dawn they always broke. You discover that everything helps you learn who you are, and that this is why we are here. You roll your eyes at yourself more gently. You sigh and go make yourself a cup of tea.
Look around and see whom you can serve.
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