A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen

"I am not particularly qualified by profession or education to give advice and counsel. I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is really all I know." So begins Anna Quindlen's A Short Guide to a Happy Life. She goes on to say, "I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back. And I try to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned." This small book is her way of sharing her insight into this thing we call Life.

She admonishes new graduates at commencement ceremonies to not ever confuse their life and their work. "You cannot be really first-rate at your work, if your work is all you are. So, the best piece of advice I could give anyone is pretty simple: Get a life. A real life. It is so easy to exist instead of to live."

She goes on to say: "You are only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. The life of your heart and your soul. It's so much easier to write a résumé than to craft a spirit." But a résumé is cold comfort when you get shocking news or your life's turned upside down. Quindlen's life résumé includes these oft-repeated phrases: "I show up. I listen. I try to laugh." And she does this as a parent, as a spouse, and with her friends.

So what kind of a life should these newly minted scholars seek? Get a life where they can notice the beauties of nature. Get a life where they have people whom they love and who love them back. "Remember that love is not leisure, it is work." Get a life where they are generous and realize that life is glorious, which they have no business taking for granted. They should care so deeply about its goodness that they should want to spread their good cheer around. "All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough."

Life happens in the details. Lillies in the field, fuzz on a leaf, sun on your face, taste of an orange. "Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement. We have to teach ourselves how to make room for those pieces of mica, every day, in some little way, to try to look at the view, and to live, really live."

And finally: "This is not a dress rehearsal. Today is the only guarantee you get."