REVIEW: The Book of Awesome

It all started with Broccoflower.
 
In 2008, Neil Pasricha’s marriage had dissolved and the world news was filled with dark and depressing events, “Polar icecaps are melting, hurricanes swirl the seas, wars are heating up around the world and the job market is in a deep freeze.”  So, what did Pasricha do?  He blogged about the strange green-hued vegetable called broccoflower on 1000awesomethings.com, and numbered it – you guessed it -- #1000.  Each day since, he has posted commentary about another awesome thing in his quest to count down to #1.  Presently he’s in the low 500s.  His popular website has had almost fourteen millions hits and, consequently, he was asked to write The Book of Awesome which just came out this month.
 
Eternally optimistic, but not sappy, the book is full of things that are universally pretty awesome – opening up a fresh jar of peanut butter and taking the first scoop, pulling off the thin layer of plastic covering your electronic gadget, the fries at the bottom of the bag, the smell of gasoline, bubble wrap.   We see things like this everyday – but our noses are so stuck in our iPhones and Blackberries, we often don’t take the time to stop and savor them.  
 
His book is the best from his blog as well as new material, and is far from being just a list.  He offers commentary, both serious and humorous, that is full of youthful enthusiasm and a “glass half full” point of view.  His take is an encouraging departure from the cynicism and entitlement sometimes seen in Pasricha’s generation.
 
About bakery air, he says:
 
Catch some of those sugary vapors next time you’re running past a cinnamon bun place at the train station.  Suck back a noseful of hot fumes when you walk your dog by an open bakery door on Saturday morning.  And make sure when you stop to smell the roses, you stop to smell the croissants and cookies too.  AWESOME!
 
About taking your bra off after wearing it for hours:
 
It just feels like freedom.  Or so I’ve heard.  AWESOME!
 
The photos are terrific too – babies giving you a high five, staring out at calm water, snow stepping.  I actually read The Book of Awesome on my brand new iPad, and I couldn’t help but catch the author’s spirit. Have you ever noticed how amazing Apple made the “turn the page” function in iBooks?  It looks and feels like you’re turning real paper pages when you’re reading!  AWESOME!

So, this is a story about the power of positive thinking, right?  About believing the best about life, and focusing on it.

Not so fast.

Towards the end of the book, the author writes about an awesome thing in an entry called, “Smiling and thinking of good friends who are gone.”  It was – upon closer examination – not awesome at all.  The entry was a poignant tribute to a good friend who died suddenly.  The entry is brought tears to my eyes, and was like a splinter you can’t quite ignore.  For the rest of the book, I kept wondering if this somehow was the true story of Pasricha’s narrative…  and I wanted to know more.

One evening, I sat down at my computer and googled his friend’s name.  I know it sounds weird, but I had to know more about this compelling character that meant so much to the author...  someone who actively participated in the 1000 Awesome Things blog, someone who knew how to find joy in the little surprises of life.  I had a lot of questions, perhaps, but mainly I wanted to know why.
 
I was thunderstruck to realize it was suicide.
 
Suddenly, I felt differently about 1000 Awesome Things.

For every “awesome thing,” there is a directly proportional “awful thing.”  For example, it is awesome to prepare to lift a heavy grocery bag only to realize it’s filled with paper towels.  Why?  Because most grocery bags are full of gallons of milk and cases of water bottles and cartons of eggs that may or may not be leaking yolks over the back of your car.  The travails of every day life remind us that this world groans under a weight of utter imperfection.  The little surprises – the light grocery bags – are themselves reminders that things just aren’t usually simple.

Most Americans are able to mitigate the trivial problems of life, by owning dishwashers, stain-removal products, and no-iron 60/40 polyester blend shirts.  But suicide?

Whether the author intended for me to go down this path or not, his book caused me to consider life’s struggles…  both small (broken eggs) and large (broken lives and broken marriages).  Recognition and appreciation of those surprising – and fleeting -- moments of goodness aren’t enough to sustain us…  but rather hint at a higher, mysterious beauty not typically found in the grocery bag.

And honestly, that makes the book worth it.  It doesn’t aspire to be a fully-developed philosophy of life.  It’s a simple, honest appreciation of the small things. 

And that makes it awesome.