A Book I Love: Become What You Are

Life is but an instant. So, why waste it preoccupied with the past or the future? It’s only when we embrace our totality in the present that we find the inner peace we so desperately seek. It sounds simple, yet we sometimes need a reminder.

If you are interested in mindfulness, Become What You Are is a breezy read. The essays are crisp and concise (sometimes a page or a page and half). Watts translates Taoism in vivid metaphors, while exploring burning questions like, “Why do angels fly?” and “How come an arrow in the sky leaves no mark?”

The book is graceful and eloquent. It’s also heady—it literally comes equipped with a mirror on the cover. So, get ready to find out what you really are. Or, at least, what you might want to become.

A few notable lessons:

• The first step is to know what you want, not what you’re supposed to want

• The illusion of self-mastery often stands in the way of sincerity 

• We become stiff and serious as a way to maintain some form of dignity. 

• To succeed, we must be like the gods and develop a sense of play

• Sometimes, the best course of action is nothing. So long as we are anxious, desperately trying to make things happen, they won’t.