The Sweetness of Life

If you assume an average life expectancy of 85 years, and deduct the hours we spend daily on sleeping, shopping, eating, and working, then how much time is left for the average person to enjoy those activities that are the sweetness of life? For Françoise Héritier, it is these experiences that make up pure joy and the actual experience of humanity, These are the moments we all cherish: wild laughter, phone calls, coffee in the sun, fresh fall evenings, running in warm rain, long conversations at twilight, cooking a complicated dish, feeling energetic, getting back together with friends you havent seen in ages, watching a craftsman at work, listening to other people Theres still so much else that I forget, says Héritier -- and over the course of this book that is part letter, part prose poem, part charming and witty self-help book, she goes on to list, with heartwarming and heartbreaking specificity, all that we so easily miss if we do not attend to the lightness and grace in our own lives,