We question the choices of our younger selves when all that matters is NOW. There are days when we cannot help fretting the things that we did not do or manage to achieve or lament the choices we have made. Time slips by whether we celebrate or lament. Time passes.
As we move forward, we want to do better so we plan, we take action and hope to do better. What matters is to open our hearts to the very moment we are in and appreciate what is before us. We feel things but we must stop overthinking about things. Often I find my mind going in circles when nothing can be done and it only upsets my otherwise rather happy go lucky self . I recently came to know a song by Strawberry Beats It is the little things that make Life Big. It is such a delightful tune and its lyrics are a reminder to appreciate the here and the little things that make you happy.
[Artwork by David Hockney, Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) Art Exhibition at Gardens by the Bay, Singapore)]
During a short weekend trip to Singapore in May, I had a quick visit to Kinokuniya Bookshop and picked up Go Gentle by Maria Semple. The title caught my attention. It is a reminder.
In Go Gentle, Adora Hazzard thinks she has it all figured out. She started as a struggling television comedy script writer and turned a known Stoic philosopher. She is divorced and lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she has applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, Viv the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She has even started a “coven”—like-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansonia—and is making active efforts to grow its membership. They share expenses to engage helpers for walking the dogs, cleaning, running errands and fixing their place. Adora’s carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger and her life will be turned upside down.
Adora has translated a book on happiness. One day she is summoned for a job interview even though she has not applied a job. ‘As a firm believer in the benevolent universe‘, she shows up. She lands with one of the weirdest jobs. She receives a fellowship from the Lockwood Library, the museum on Fifth Avenue. It houses rare books, art, and whatever show that is currently up. The entrance to the library on the Upper East Side is free. She is hired to provide moral training and tutoring for Lionel and Layla Lockwood’s eleven year old twin sons, Lucien and Lorenzo. She teaches them the four virtues : Wisdom, courage, justice and temperance, and tries to paraphrases Seneca.
‘He who wants nothing is the richest man in the world’ ‘The less you want, the happier you’ll be. ‘
Lionel Lockwoord is the left-leaning, black-sheep son of right-wing scion Loren Lockwood. He comes from the kind of money where you pay to keep your name out of the newspaper.’When the twins were five, the family was summering in Aspen. One afternoon, Lionel and his coach went free-climbing up Independence Pass. They ‘d reached forty feet when, in a true freak occurrence, an aluminum camp chair got caught n a gust of wind and came sailing towards Lionel.’ He survived the fall but suffered several strokes during ‘an all-night, touch-and-go surgery to save his shattered left arm‘.He emerged with his left amputated and right side paralyzed.
Adora has translated three Stoic books.Her job description requires her to sit with her depressed husband for an hour. She has been hired because she has translated a book on happiness by Epictetus. One day Layla saw a light in her husband’s eyes when he reads Adora’s introduction and then he refused to pick up the book again. When she is first hired, Adora is taken to the family residence across the street from the Lockwood Library, ‘security discreetly trailing‘, she feels like she is entering Alice in Wonderland….Layla will stop at nothing to snap Lionel out of his sorrow and to get him to bounce back to life. When she is brought to Lionel, he is miserable and her that he is living the nightmare. She tells him that there is nothing you can be barred from that’s so big it doesn’t leave available something even bigger you can’t be barred from. She tells him that acceptance is not enough he has to love it. Nietzsche said, Amor fati. Love fate. You have to love what happened to you. Adora has the words’ AMOR FATI’ tattooed on her wrist. Lionel asks to see her tattoo, she shows him. Now he recognizes a kindred soul. Layla offers Adora a fellowship. So begin Adora’s reading sessions with Lionel. There is no lesson plan.’One day it was a Montaigne essay, the next, John Locke. The day after, Richard Pryor videos.‘ They ‘delighted in Rousseau, gerrymander Nietzche,dreamed of running off with the existentialists, bemoaned the unreadibility of Kant yet plowed through regardless, aspired to Hume’s conviviality, developed a parasocial relationship with Saint Augustine.‘ But they always return to Stoicism: Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus.
Adora goes to the ballet alone and she meets David Ignatius Beale (Digby), an older, handsome man whom she passes her spare ticket when her friend cancels on her. There is instant attraction between them but she feels conflicted due to her carefully constructed independence. She thinks she is done with love and men when her resolve to live without romance is being tested.
Then the Lockwoods make a trip to Paris, Layla arranges for Lionel to have a private audience with the Venus de Milo.The statue is missing both arms. Lionel becomes ‘overwhelmed by her limbless majesty‘. He weeps. Layla believes that the Venus de Milo has saved her husband’s life. As the story progresses, Adora discovers that the Venus de Milo in the Louvre is a fake as during WWII , a French curator named Pierre Montfort had smuggled the real statue to his chateau leaving a fake statue at the Louvre. Adora unwittingly becomes involved in locating the real statue restoring it and eventually with her arms attached. There is the whole subplot in the story that has Adora misinterpreting the writing on a piece of paper that she has been entrusted by Digby to hand to Layla and her finding out that Digby knows who she is all along that makes her wonder about his feelings towards her.
Go Gentle by Maria Semple is a hilarious story of midlife transformation about a character who is quirky, intelligent ,big hearted and funny. It covers serious themes such as machismo culture and also the absurdities in life. Adora Hazzard is endearing in that she is a romantic as much as a stoic.
During my visit to the Louvre Museum in early July, I told my daughter that we had to seek out Venus de Milo and look at the statue again. It had taken us a few turns to get to the right place.
The Louvre , Paris 2 July 2026
Bookaholic Macchiato 