Free to Be Human

"...will help you cope with the pain of being human and revel in the joy of it" —Ann Landers

With the same understanding and compassionate insights that have made his Pain of Being Human and Joy of Being Human bestselling books, Eugene Kennedy here discusses the inner barricades that people erect in their life and how certain attitudes can impede our self-realization and happiness. "We miss the human situation when we try to break away from it," he writes, adding that we must learn to accept certain limitations and human imperfections as we search for inner freedom and peace.

These essays cover a wide range of situations that comprise the fabric of all human life: dealing with anger, impatience, insecurity, obsessions, loss, and death. We are helped here in seeing the meaning beneath what may appear as only a jumble of everyday events. In facilitating our greater self-understanding and self-acceptance, Kennedy helps pave the way for our handling the challenges and problems inherent in all our other relationships. The key to our success, he advises, is "our readiness to enter into our experience—to suffer it as well as to celebrate it—and always to call it by its right name."

This is a helpful and practical book that gives its readers a chance to pause, reflect, and get a renewed perspective on life.