Some books I love and barely flag anything I want to talk about in these posts, while I end up highlighting tons of things in others I think aren’t so great.  Not sure why that is.

“Way of the Peaceful Warrior” by Dan Millman is one of the latter.  It’s by no means the worst book I’ve ever read, just for some reason one I didn’t totally get into.  Maybe it’s the writing style, or the underlying feeling that the entire story can be explained by thinking the characters ingested massive amounts of LSD, but let’s call it two out of four stars..

The story follows Dan’s experience as a college student who stumbles upon an old guy working at a gas station who becomes his mentor.  The old guy, whom Dan nicknames Socrates, puts him through all kinds of training and tests to change the way Dan thinks and approaches the world — things like meditation and changing his diet.  Sometimes he presses on Dan’s forehead, sending him on some sort of dream-like, seemingly hallucinogenic journey.

I am not Dan Millman and I can’t say what he did or didn’t experience.  That said, I think most people would say some of the things he describes with Socrates are a little out there.

He becomes infatuated with a woman named Joy, and late in the story Socrates does one of his tricks, touching Dan lightly at the base of his skull:

“The lights went out, and I immediately forgot I ever knew a woman named Joy.”

Maybe the most off-putting thing for me is Dan’s portrayal of Socrates as basically all-knowing.  Dan is a world-class gymnast, and wouldn’t you know, Socrates shows up at his practice one day and gives him perfect tips on perfecting his form.  Again, I’m in no position to question the facts of his life, but taken together it was hard for me to believe parts of the story.

That’s not to say the book doesn’t have interesting points.  If it were a collection of phrases or short parables, I may have liked it better.  For instance, there’s this piece I think describes what a lot of people go through in the struggle to figure out what to do with their life:

“Everyone everywhere lived a confused, bitter search.  Reality never matched their dreams; happiness was just around the corner — a corner they never turned.  And the source of it all was the human mind.”

At some point many people have a hypothetical conversation about what they would do if they learned they were dying.  But as Millman writes, we’re all dying:

“You DO have a terminal illness:  It’s called birth…So be happy NOW, without reason — or you never will be at all.”

Socrates tells Dan a lot about valuing action and being in the present over being paralyzed thinking about the past or the future.  One of his final lessons is to teach Dan that the answer to the questions “What time is it?” and “Where are you?” are “now” and “here.”

One of the pieces I did very much connect with is something I think about all the time.  Socrates says that “everything has a purpose…there are no accidents.”  Of course it’s easier to look at any negative or setback and frame it as a lesson or some other meaningful event.  But there have been lots of times I’ve truly felt this idea was real.

Take my trip to work a few weeks ago.  I barely missed my normal train and ended up on one that broke down after a few stops.  We sat for 45 minutes without moving, meaning I was 45 minutes later to work, and missed out on that much sleep the next day.  But when I got out of the station and walked toward the building, I ran into a family of what sounded like German tourists who were lost and looking for the Metro station.  Without the delay — during which I read a big chunk of this book — I would have been sitting inside a few blocks away and not there to direct them down an otherwise deserted street.

Sure, that could have been a totally coincidental event, but even so, does that mean it had no purpose?

I can see how a lot of people would find this book life-changing, and as I said, I did get some things from it.  But I’m not about to seek the path of becoming a warrior anytime soon.

I’ll close with one last bit from Socrates (which may or may not be a reason to embed the video it reminded me of): “Love is the only reality of the world.”