The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life - David Brooks

Written by David Brooks
Read by Arthur Morey
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: April 16, 2019
Duration: 12:58:43

Subtitle..How People Move from the Prison of Self to the Joy of Commitment

Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain.

And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment.

In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.

In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.

Though Brooks, a NEW YORK TIMES columnist, is a frequent television commentator, this audiobook is narrated by Arthur Morey. But it seems as if Brooks is talking directly to the listener. Since this is an intimate work about finding life’s meaning that relies heavily on research and quotes from philosophers and writers, that conversational tone is critical to the audiobook’s impact. There is much to admire in the author’s thesis that happiness is not as rewarding as the joy that a life of service brings. The audiobook provokes the listener to think about a range of subjects and offers prescriptive advice on how to achieve personal growth through social responsibility. For those who are questing, Brooks and Morey offer a pathway to the purpose-driven life. L.W.S. � AudioFile 2019,