| Oh, mostly personal. How to be a kinder person. How to not take things for granted. How to contribute more to my community. How to accept that due to a drift in my world views, I will likely never have as close a relationship with my parents as when I was young. How to decide if one should withdraw from the world as much as possible or embrace it. How to view every person as valuable. How to respect every person even when they are creating problems for you. How to cope with long term illness in the family. How to feel about having amassed an amount of money that seems disproportionate to my contribution to society. How to disagree with people without resenting them (even when you believe the things they believe are hurting people). How to raise a kid who is curious and interested in things. How to raise a kid that shuns cruelty. How guide a kid away from traps you fell into yourself without taking over their life. How to show people you appreciate them. I'm not saying no book has helped with any of the above. But I have never read a book that fixed one of these problems or really even ever told me anything very interesting about them. What to do is mostly obvious. How to get oneself to do those things is the hard part. And I think that kind of change doesn't come from reading one book. It comes from many absorbed over a long period of time. It comes from daily devotions (not specifically of the Christian variety, though I have seen those guide people well too). Maybe I'm wrong but that's the best I've figured out. |