Your entire life is like a gigantic game of Chutes and Ladders: Shake the dice, move two steps ahead, and you hit a ladder that takes you to higher places on the game board. Three more squares, and you hit a chute that sends you back to the bottom.
Life and children’s games are alike in this way: as described in the new book “The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times” (Crown, November 2022), by former First Lady Michelle Obama, the only way to win is to keep playing.
Pandemic, recession, political divide, market volatility. For many months, you’ve wondered every morning what fresh chaos you’ll deal with that day. So what keeps you going? How do we overcome feelings of being “wobbly and unsettled?”
Obama says she ponders this “a lot.” She thinks about the practices she uses to keep her “balanced and confident… moving forward even during times of high anxiety and stress.” She calls these practices her “personal toolbox” and she shares them in this book.
Most recently, she says, the pandemic taught her the value of having a hobby to relax into, to let her hands work, “my mind trailing behind.” Her early life taught her the value of seeing the difference between real fear and fear of newness and change.
The latter, surprisingly, is easy to overcome, she says. Newness offers us “chances to grow.”
“I’ve come to understand that sometimes the big stuff becomes easier to handle when you deliberately put something small alongside it,” she explains.
Listen to your body and “pay attention to how you’re feeling,” Obama advises. “Collect small boosts, and learn to look at yourself in a more positive way. Love your differences and be kind to yourself.
Be open to connections with others; cultivate friendships you can count on. “Know your own light [and] share it with another person.” Be authentic.
And finally, she counsels, “Tell the truth, do your best by others, keep perspective, stay tough. That’s basically been our recipe for getting by.”
Chances are that in the past two-to-three years you got out of bed one morning and you weren’t even sure why you bothered. It’s been a long haul and you’re tired. “The Light We Carry” can help, getting you to your next goal, then the next.
At first glance, it doesn’t look like that kind of a book. Obama is a true storyteller, which lends to her “show-don’t-tell” style of writing. She lulls the reader into an entertaining story of life in the White House, a gossipy snippet of her married life, or a juicy memory from her childhood, and suddenly, yet seamlessly, rolls her narrative to an easy, doable tip for surviving in hard times.
Readers will be glad to see that “The Light We Carry” is no cheerleading tome. Rather, it calmly and confidently asserts, “You can do this” and shows you how. You can find your own box of “tools” to keep yourself balanced and empowered in the face of turmoil or uncertainty.
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