From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

Drawing again on Eastern philosophy, Brooks opens Chapter 4 with an anecdote about visiting the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. The topic of what constitutes art just before its creation comes up with his guide. In Western thought, the blank canvas represents this moment of art before its creation. In Eastern thought, the moment before creation is a block of jade, uncarved and waiting for pieces to be removed. As Brooks posits, Western thought tends to think in terms of addition while Eastern thought tends to think in terms of subtraction. The same is true of success. The secret to contentment is stripping away nonessentials rather than mindlessly accumulating things, which people in the West tend to do.

The second barrier to moving to the second curve is attachment to worldly things. The fourth chapter looks at why people are attached and how they can alter this path or their behavior. Many people are like a successful entrepreneur Brooks once met who couldn’t get enough of people and material goods. The richer he got, the more he purchased. This takes to heart an adage from Malcolm Forbes, an American entrepreneur—“[h]e who dies with the most toys, wins” (69).