Picked This Book…Now I’m Hooked
We’re all looking for something to cling on to, something to fight for, something to look forward to.
50 pages in, and you’ll find yourself grinning at the text while onlookers watch intently, wondering if you’re a fool, for smiling at a book titled ‘Anxious People’. It’s a story about many things, but mostly about how we are all human. And its our vulnerabilities that we share in common.
Modern humans are an anxious race. Anxiety runs through our veins. We’re worried about the past, the future and everything in between. We are worried about paying bills, about reaching work on time, about our diet plans, and sometimes we even worry about social interactions. We worry about being a poor parent. We even worry about our appearances, and also about not being successful enough. The anxiety always starts small, almost imperceptible, but then it grows. It grows into this self-sustaining monster that begins to feed on your mind and body. But that’s not what this book is about.
This book is about a group of anxious strangers that find themselves in a hostage situation a day before the New-Year’s Eve. A witty, light-hearted read that will have you clutching the pages and holding back your tears. You will smile when you discover the characters’ unusual traits, forcing your brain to draw connections from real life. You’ll sink into your chair, filled with grief as you course through the feelings of a man who lost his beloved wife. Your eyes will widen in bewilderment as the story takes yet another unexpected turn. But most of all, you will realize one fundamental truth:
We’re all doing the best we can.
We’re constantly working at being better at our jobs. Doing our best to learn new things. Trying our best to show up for people we love while we precariously balance our meticulously crafted lives. We’re all looking for something to cling on to, something to fight for, something to look forward to.
Sharing an excerpt from the book I absolutely adore:
You’re supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you’re supposed to pay taxes and even remember the damn wifi password. Our hearts are bars of soap that we keep losing hold of; the moments we relax, they drift off and fall in love and get broken, all in the wink of an eye. So we learn to pretend, all the time, about our jobs and our marriages and our children and everything else. Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we toss about like a lost sock. Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no reason. Sometimes we panic, because the bills need paying and we have grown up. And then, there are times we terribly fail at being a grown up. Sometimes we behave like overprotective penguins squatting on a stone because we don’t want to accept the egg has gone. It’s easy to talk only about work when you haven’t quite got the words to talk about the other things in life. Sometimes we lie to those we love, and convince ourselves its for the better.
Life can go all sorts of ways, but sometimes it goes terribly wrong. It makes you wonder about the economic system we have created. The one that lends money to those who don’t need it and not to those who actually do. The rich get rich, the poor poorer. Then one day, you find yourself in desperate circumstances and vow never to be the same again, working tirelessly to escape what you’ve seen. Or you choose to do something foolish that changes the course of your life.
Look around you! Everyone wrestles their own inner demons — complexes, anxieties and insecurities. And sometimes we have far too many people projecting them onto others. You slowly realize that people get judged no matter who they are, what they do or where they come from. As adults, we have to make decisions all the time. Sometimes even when we don’t know how to or have the energy to make them. There is an increasing urge to know everything, even when we possibly can’t. Sometimes we forget how greedy we are, but above all we forget how weak we are. We lead by telling people what to do, and not by letting them do what they are capable of instead. Sometimes we run out of energy to keep experiencing things in life. We long for the boring, everyday things — grocery shopping, picking kids from school, a walk outdoors. Sometimes people fail to see the desperation in your actions as the chaos that slowly consumes your heart. And so you keep going about life in circles until something shakes you and then you learn.
What all are you willing to put at stake for the sake of your loved ones?
Till what extent do you push your moral compass to save your child?
In the end, it is our actions that define us and the words that prime us.
A wonderful literary escape from the mundane, the author does a fabulous job at keeping you hooked while allowing enough room for introspection.
If my midnight brain-dump was a bit too much for you to process, why not pick up this book and tell me what it uncovered in you?
adios
