Book Review

The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I like this book a great deal. At the risk of fulfilling a prophecy of the book, let me first make a disclaimer or two.

1. It is not the end-all solution to all the world's problems.
2. The presentation of the first few pages is a bit off-putting to those who are realists such as myself.

Having said that, however, it's easy to read past the "uncomfortable" bits and glean some very good, very helpful and best of all, very motivational thoughts. The book "feels" good, if you will.

I thought The Four Agreements tended to suggest that we quash all emotion but I also think that likely wasn't the true intent of Mr. Ruiz. His approach makes it a bit difficult to tell for certain except for one very quick sentence. My opinion, regardless, is that emotion is an essential part of our being and it is required of us to be fully human. Therefore, it should not be quashed It is, however, important to master how we express our emotions when we are beset by them.

It should also be mentioned that it's not possible to understand the agreements by reading the flyleaf. Oh, no! You have to read the book in order to fully understand the full scope and intent of it, especially as the agreements relate to oneself. For example, it's important to be impeccable with your word, the first agreement. Not only to others but to yourself. It's hinted at in the flyleaf but you have to read the book to get the full depth of what it means to be impeccable with yourself, too.

This is a book about kick-starting thought processes. It's a book about re-thinking why you believe what you believe. Did you choose your beliefs? I feel you did, even if you did it unconsciously. Do you know why you chose your beliefs? If you did it unconsciously, you may not know why. You should find out. If you just accepted your beliefs as they were spoon fed to you by your parents or a religious leader, perhaps you believe blindly. Maybe you're okay with that but I believe everyone should exert some introspection and make a determination as to why.

Doing so will do one of two (or many) things:

1. It will affirm your current faith and drive you to a long life of fulfilling those beliefs with greater passion and ever greater satisfaction, without the snobbishness which comes from those who believe dogmatically and unthinkingly

or

2. It will set you on a path of self-discovery and personal growth, driving you to a long life of self-fulfillment and confidence, knowing that it is important to believe in the idea of discovering new things whenever possible, throughout the rest of your life.

I can see that it would be easy to become dogmatic about The Four Agreements or Mr. Ruiz's other works. My feeling, however, is that we can benefit the most by using this kind of writing as a launching pad for a lifetime of continuous self-introspection, discovery and refinement of belief and thought.

--Wag--


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Memoirs of Don and Emily - Part 3

Most of my free time was spent with Grandpa. Grandma and I got along swimmingly, of course, but Grandpa and I had a lot more in common with each other. As I spent time with him, I realized just how tough his life had been. Grandma didn't get into that kind of discussion with me but Granddad told me much about her life as well and I came to know that they had not had an easy life in any sense of the word.

I sometimes think about how they saw the world change around them. I don't recall the exact years of their births but seem to recall they were born early enough to know the pain and suffering of the Great Depression. As a result, they knew the need for hard work, whether it be physical or mental. They clawed their way through most of their lives with a minimum of the physical necessities. Whatever they had was valuable and important and luxury? Puh-leeze! They simply didn't have any.

Their most valuable possessions after their religion was their education.

Based on some VERY personal conversations I had with both Grandma and Grandpa, I won't discuss their religious beliefs here.

As for their educations, they felt that above all other things, this was the most valuable possession they owned. I came to realize that it was true. With their educations, they were able to rise above their surroundings. The people surrounding them and the circumstances surrounding them. With education, they moved past the suffering of the Depression and of poor circumstances and essentially lifted themselves up by their bootstraps. Anyone else out there ever build their own house brick by brick? I know some have but very very few.

Education, to them, was critical. I should mention that it didn't just mean that they had a sheepskin on the wall, though they both had that as well. Grandpa in particular was the kind of man who, if he wanted to learn how to do something, would ask, study, research and do whatever it took to find out how to do what he wanted. He demonstrated how education can frequently be obtained outside the walls of institutional learning. Often, that wasn't good enough and he found it well within his capacity to add creativity and inventiveness and make it better thah what had been originally conceived in his mind or the minds of others. Hence, his ability to build a house from the ground up, grow every plant known to man, keep his home and yard in good repair and generally, make his life more and more comfortable as he moved through life.

Interestingly enough, even though I never knew any of the details of their finances, they lived quite conservatively and never to excess. Grandpa drove the same ol' beat up pickup truck for as many years as I could remember, before and after my stay with them. Grandma drove the same ol' Pontiac that she had when I was a little kid. In fact, now that I think about it, I don't think I ever saw either of them with a new car. Seems like they must have bought a new car after their bad accident a few years after my departure but I don't recall that I ever saw it. Amazing, though, to think that they valued thier possessions enough to make something like that last for 20 years, give or take.

I think it's notable that they took very good care of their furniture, too. It seems that most of what they owned they had had for a long, long, LONG time. It was so well cared for, it seemed, that it could be considered only slightly used but I know it had been around a while. One thing is certain, their conservativism made it possible to have a very comfortable retirement. Some of that came from their pensions but much of it also came from their apparent habit of saving and watching their spending very closely.

Midway through my stay with them, Grandpa bought a computer. To this day, I'm not 100% sure what his original motivations were but I do know that it was a boon to me. I didn't have to use the manual typewriter for term papers any more! Grandpa diligently taught himself to use the computer and I did likewise. Sometimes, I would stay up until 4:00am on a weekend, just learning how to do what I wanted to do with it. I made every effort to make sure I didn't take too much of Grandpa's time on the computer and even though he never said anything to me about it, in hindsight, I wonder if he ever felt any frustration at how much time I was spending on it. Grandpa did use that computer, though he tended to use it more as a glorified typewriter and expressed a significant degree of frustration with it. Still, he learned, I taught him as much as I could and he learned well.

Amazingly, he was, as I hinted above, the kind of man who could learn throughout his life. Even though later on he had to carry around a stack of note cards to keep in touch with what he wanted to do, he could learn new things quite readily. The computer was one of them and in spite of his frustrations, he adapted to it well. After several years, however, he finally gave it up and went back to writing letters by hand. I wasn't personally offended, of course, but I felt that it was a bit of a step backward. Still, it was always good to get a letter from Grandpa or Grandma in their own handwriting. Grandma didn't eve learn to use the computer and I never knew why. She just used her typewriter and signed in her own hand.

I should mention, those of you who are descendants of Don and Emily have all of that innate intelligence they had. Don't deny it, you know you do!

Well, I started out to write more about some of the philosophical conversations I had with Grandpa but I think I'll hold on to that for next time!

--Wag--