Getting a Life

This book is about crafting full, rich, creative, and enjoyable lives for ourselves - lives that are significant, lives that contribute in some way to the world around us. Getting a Life is rooted in the idea that some steps toward wisdom require nothing more than a fresh look at common life situations, nothing more than an appreciation of the difference between skillful and unskillful ways of dealing with those situations. Its premise is that a few truths about everyday life, if pointed out and taken seriously, can make a significant difference in the quality of day-to-day living and our enjoyment of life.Getting a Life is about applied, practical wisdom - the kind of wisdom that Coleridge called "Common sense in an uncommon degree." To Copthorne Macdonald, wisdom comprises a mix of extraordinary attitudes, value-based ways of being, and ways of seeing. He takes the position that growing wiser is not something than must be left to the whims of fate; wisdom can be developed intentionally. Getting a Life reinforces our best intuitions and intentions, leads us to some fresh insights about everyday life, and helps us develop that uncommon degree of common sense that is practical wisdom.