if you live to 100, you might as well be happy

accepting life how it is and not how it should be.

I am two things that at first might seem to be contradictory: I am a minimalist who loves to read. Although having overflowing shelves of books may seem like a version of heaven, I recognize in myself that although I love books, there are only so many that will fit into my apartment without giving me undue anxiety, so I utilize both the local bookstore and my local library to fit my reading needs.

I love the bookstore and seeing all the titles of books just waiting to be read, fills me with joy. But since I am on a budget and there's my aforementioned minimalism, I like to peruse the books there and see if any strike my fancy. Those that do, I add to my TBR list (to be read), and when I get home, I check online to see if my local library has the book. If so, I put in a request for the book and wait for it to come in.

This summer, I was at the bookstore doing my thing, when I came across this book:

I was intrigued by the title and the synopsis and after glancing and reading a few pages, I was hooked. I knew this was a book that I absolutely wanted to read, and I was lucky that my library had the book within their system. I had to wait a few weeks for my turn in the queue, but I was rewarded when I received the email that the book was available for pick-up.

Synopsis from If You Live to 100, You Might as Well Be Happy

Friends don't let the title of this book dissuade you from reading it. It was fantastic. Whether you are 25, 45, 75, or some age before, after, or in between, this book was so chockful of wisdom and light to guide all of us on this path of life. The author, Rhee Kun Hoo, retired from a medical career in psychiatry, didn't start writing books in his native South Korea until he was in his 70's. This particular book, If You Live to 100, You Might as Well Be Happy, was first published when he was 87 years of age. How wonderful and amazing is that?

I wrote down so many things from this book that I just loved, and I am sharing some of the author's wisdom here:

"What causes us so much emotional and psychological suffering? In my experience, there are two major causes. One is regret about the past, the other is anxiety about the future. Both are inevitable, of course, but both need to be tempered. The past cannot be changed, regardless of your regret, and the future cannot be avoided, regardless of your anxiety. What's worse, these two will keep eating away at the joy you can find, right now, in your life in the present".

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"No matter how you've lived, you'll always look back on the road you did not choose and feel inevitable regret and curiosity. But does regret mean you've chosen wrong?

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"...forgiveness is a choice you must make for your own sake. To paraphrase the Buddhist saying, resentment is like a hot coal you hold in your hand just to throw it at someone, but it is you who ends up getting burned".

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"Don't take things in your life for granted. Life with relative health itself is not a privilege everyone gets to enjoy".

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"Life is made up, in large part, of ordinary days rather than memorable delights or extreme sorrows. If you continue to find fault with ordinary days, therefore, you'll naturally end up spending most of your life discontented and bored, but if you seek out whatever joy and fun you can in those mundane days, your life, as the total sum, will be a hell of a lot of fun".

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"You shine when you are not trying to be someone else".

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I found this book to be so comforting especially in our modern age and all of the feelings and thoughts that go along with being a human in the year 2024. The author's words seemed like a soothing handbook for life, a blueprint for when life feels messy. I enjoyed reading it and would absolutely recommend it to any readers out there. I'll leave you with one last quote:

"Life is a story you should read till the very last page. No one ever knows what the world has in store for you".

Life is a story. Indeed.