#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Everybody tells you to live for a
cause larger than yourself, but how exactly do you do it? The author of
The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a meaningful life
in a self-centered world.
"Deeply moving, frequently eloquent and extraordinarily
incisive."--The Washington Post
Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy--who seem to know why
they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life,
for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a
two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and
they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb.
Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to
be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But
when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look
around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn't
my mountain after all. There's another, bigger mountain out there that
is actually my mountain.
And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves
from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are
truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They
embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a
life of commitment.
In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments
that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a
vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal
fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments.
Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed
lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He
gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation,
how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our
commitments into one overriding purpose.
In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives.
But it's also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society,
Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to
ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves
in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and
love. We have taken individualism to the extreme--and in the process we
have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to
repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain,
Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center
of our lives.
