Book Review: Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally

Book Review: Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally (Skirt!, August, 2008) by Patti Digh

In the beginning, this book annoyed the hell out of me.

Here's the set-up: "In October of 2003, my stepfather was diagnosed with
lung cancer. He died 37 days later."

Tragic. Though I can't imagine, I can empathize. But then comes the goopy
stuff:

The time frame of 37 days made an impression on me. We often live as if we
have all the time in the world, but the definite-ness of 37 days was striking.
So short a time, as if all the regrets and joys of a life would barely have
time to register before time was up....

I tried to reconcile the fact that this fearful death was happening with the
understanding that I needed to make something good out of it. What emerged was
a commitment to ask myself this question every morning: What would I be
doing today if I only had 37 days to live?

Well, you know the answer. Savor every second. "Enjoy every sandwich," as
the dying Warren Zevon put it.
Buddhism 101. The punch line of a million self-help books.

So was I moved by Ms. Digh's approach to her theoretical last 37 days in Life Is a Verb ---
pumping out reams of writing so her young daughters would have some idea who
Mom was? No. And not because I'm hard-hearted. It's just that I've heard all
this. Many times, most recently in Improv Wisdom, which I
consider the last word on Showing Up and Being Here.

But I stumbled on, past the beautifully designed pages with the lovely art and
the super-sincere poems by poets I'd never heard of, until I achieved the
entrance to Part One. "Inhabit Your Story." The predictable moral arrived on
schedule: "Find the change you can make and make it."

On to Part Two: "The Six Practices for Intentional Living." Which includes:
"Dance in your car", followed by "carry a small grape" and "always rent the red
convertible" and "say wow when you see as bus".

What was I doing in this Birkenstock gulag, surrounded by Good Thoughts?

But then I hit the story of Ms. Digh sitting on a plane next to a boor, and how
they became close friends. The next page brought another compelling story. The
Jungian analyst Marion Woodman, sick in India, is bothered by a large brown
woman who crowds her on the couch of the hotel lobby. For days. On the fourth
day, the woman's husband shows up to say he had been sending his wife there to
pour her warmth and life energy into the body of the dying Woodman. The woman
had, Woodman decided, saved her life. And then came the story of Digh's college
lover, back in 1978. Richard was African-American. Patti's parents were less
than thrilled. The relationship withered. Flash-cut to now. Richard is now
Amanda. He wears his old girlfriend's earrings.

Tell me enough stories, and one will be an arrow to the heart.
Richard-and-Patti was, and then, suddenly, they all were --- and advice like
"Go to a black barbershop to get your hair cut if you're a Caucasian" no longer
seemed monumentally trite. Reading on, I learned about hikaru dorodango
--- shiny Japanese mud balls --- and how to make better ones simply by making
more. I learned how to disagree by saying, elegantly, "I don't see the truth in
that." I was reminded what a dollar can mean to the person ahead of you in the
supermarket line. I encountered some very wise quotations, like this, from Eric
Hoffer: "You can discover what your enemy fears by observing the means he uses
to frighten you."

In short, as I read on, I found myself getting sharper and smarter. I
considered why it might be better to make a mistake --- and learn from it ---
than strain to get everything right. And I read the obituary Patti Digh wrote
recently for her father --- who died in 1980, when she was in her teens --- and
misted over.

The stories in the news these days are so big. Tectonic plates are moving.
History is being made. But then, it always is. "Life is a Verb" is a reminder
that our lives are bigger than the stories in the headlines. A small thought?
Not to me. Now I have to go back to the beginning and start again....

-- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com