The author expounds on the burden of life gleaned from art and philosophy, his love of reading and writing, the importance of a persevering life amidst fear and pain, and the meaning of co-existing with other people.

“What is the reason for us to put up with life in the midst of inescapable anxiety, pain, sorrow, fatigue, and the dreariness?”

This book contains writing that will help people go on with their lives with meaning. The author expounds on the burden of life gleaned from art and philosophy, his love of reading and writing, the importance of a persevering life amidst fear and pain, and the significance of co-existing with other people. The true meaning of life can be discovered not in following a predetermined path but to struggle and meander to find one’s own way. The book whispers comforting words to people whose days are steeped in confusion and apprehensiveness but still faithfully trudge along in life—that their future can be turned around. 

The author confesses in the book, “I always questioned what life was about but reading made me realize that every day was different and each day could be joyful.” Writing, he adds, also made his life complete. That is the reason he never shirked off reading and writing on a daily basis, and even after becoming a professor, he has emphasized to his students the joy of reading and the need for writing. He was chosen as a most popular teacher for a number of reasons; one, he helped students transform their lives through these two activities, rather than offering antiquated moral discourses. In his books, Reading Together, Dismantling the Heart’s Barrier, Reading, Man’s Best Activity, Ethos, Writing That Will Change One’s Life and Reading, A Journey of Empathy and Self-Understanding, the author encourages readers to approach reading and writing from their own experience—for that is the most certain way one can enrich life and give meaning to it. 

His experiences that he talks about sound ordinary; however, what he gained from it is anything but that, for it is refreshing and solid. He tells readers that stress and anxiety are not necessarily bad, for they can be the source of what turns life around. If one does not fear loneliness, then one will learn to appreciate solitude. In the book, readers will meet a man who has released all tension from life, subsequently looking at and around himself to reach a simple but deep truth that he shares with everyone.