Toward resilience

Buy Toward Resilience - A Guide to Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation (Paperback) for R358.00

This item is sold brand new. It is ordered on demand from our supplier and is usually dispatched within 7 - 11 working days It is perhaps our noblest cause, and certainly one of our oldest: to end suffering. Think of the Buddha, Chuang Tzu, or Marcus Aurelius: stoically composed figures impervious to the torments of the wider world, living their lives in complete serenity and teaching us how to do the same. After all, isn't a life free from suffering the ideal? Isn't it what so many of us seek? Absolutely not, argues Todd May in this provocative but compassionate book. In a moving examination of life and the trials that beset it, he shows that our fragility, our ability to suffer, is actually one of the most important aspects of our humanity. May starts with a simple but hard truth: suffering is inevitable. At the most basic level, we suffer physically a sprained ankle or a bad back. But we also suffer insults and indifference. We suffer from overburdened schedules and unforeseen circumstances, from moral dilemmas and emotional heartaches. Even just thinking about our own mortality the fact that we only live one life can lead us to tremendous suffering. No wonder philosophies such as Buddhism, Taosim, Stoicism, and even Epicureanism all of which counsel us to rise above these plights have had appeal over the centuries. May highlights the tremendous value of these philosophies and the ways they can guide us toward better lives, but he also exposes a major drawback to their tenets: such invulnerability is too emotionally disengaged from the world, leading us to place too great a distance between ourselves and our experience. Rather than seeking absolute immunity, he argues most of us just want to hurt less and learn how to embrace and accept what suffering we do endure in a meaningful way. Offering a guide on how to positively engage suffering, May ultimately lays out a new way of thinking about how we exist in the world, one that reassures us that our suffering, rather than a failure of physical or psychological resilience, is a powerful and essential part of life itself. Features Summary It is perhaps our noblest cause, and certainly one of our oldest: to end suffering. Think of the Buddha, Chuang Tzu, or Marcus Aurelius: stoically composed figures impervious to the torments of the wider world... Author Todd. May Publisher University of Chicago Press Release date 20170225 Pages 272 ISBN 0-226-43995-X ISBN 13 978-0-226-43995-2

In the Company of Angels is the powerful story of two damaged souls trying to find their way from darkness toward light. Imprisoned and tortured for months by Pinochet's henchmen for teaching political poetry to his students, Bernardo Greene is visited by two angels, who promise him that he will survive to experience beauty and love once again. Months later, at the Torture Rehabilitation Center in Copenhagen, the Chilean exile befriends Michela Ibsen, herself a survivor of domestic abuse. In the long nights of summer, the two of them struggle to heal, to forgive those who have left them damaged, and to trust themselves to love. Dense with wisdom and humanity, possessed of a timeless, fable-like quality, In the Company of Angels is a riveting read and a testament to the resilience and complexity of the human heart. ·         *N.B.*   If you buy more than one book from me on the same day you only pay R 6 extra postage for each of the additional books - See what else I have to offer, it might just be worth your while.  

***  THIS  BOOK  IS  MISSING, PLEASE  DO  NOT  ORDER  YET  ***    Every now and then, a book comes along that you want to tell the next person you meet, "You must read this." ANGELS is simply masterful -- an exquisitely-written book that focuses on the theme of torture (physical and emotional) and redemption. I promise -- you will not soon forget it. In the Company of Angels is the powerful story of two damaged souls trying to find their way from darkness toward light. >>>    Imprisoned and tortured for months by Pinochet's henchmen for teaching political poetry to his students, Bernardo Greene is visited by two angels, who promise him that he will survive to experience beauty and love once again. Months later, at the Torture Rehabilitation Center in Copenhagen, the Chilean exile befriends Michela Ibsen, herself a survivor of domestic abuse. In the long nights of summer, the two of them struggle to heal, to forgive those who have left them damaged, and to trust themselves to love.   Dense with wisdom and humanity, possessed of a timeless, fable-like quality, In the Company of Angels is a riveting read and a testament to the resilience and complexity of the human heart. ·         *N.B.*   If you buy more than one book from me on the same day you only pay R 6 extra postage for each of the additional books - See what else I have to offer, it might just be worth your while.