The School of Life (such a lofty title) is a project coming from Alain de Botton's concern related to the lack of, so-called, proper "emotional education" for sapiens.

He found it puzzling how humankind advances a lot on technologies, civilizations, & ability to satisfy its wants (& needs, arguably), yet not really evolve much mentally & emotionally. Such a contrast between technological & psychological advancement, in which so many adults with high intelligence for things technical & discipline-specific are childish & failing in so many aspects of self-and-others' relationships.

This book is a compilation of The School of Life's contributions on how to live well & flourish with a combination of philosophical & psychological, & Classical cultural insights.

This book tries to tackle such interesting issues. However, just as the project falls short of offering much help & insights, this book also only offer glimpses of ideas about how to tackle issues related to self, others, platonic & spousal relationships, work, & culture.

I appreciate its reminder of balance between Romanticism and Classical insights, passion & mind, emotional & cognitive, & to be slow in anger & judgment. However, the insistence to advocate Classical education & culture, stemming from Ancient Greco-Roman, Enlightenment, & Industrial era, shows how much this book's perspective comes from Western, white privileged mindset, with the reliance on post-religious approach to tackle human's deepest emotional needs.

The solutions offered were mainly related to change of mindset, paying attention to cultural works such as paintings, literatures, and/or music, without giving attention to social construct & local contexts shaping our diversified culture. Western supremacy seems still held dear by its writers.

This book is a good gateway for self-help in combination with philosophical (albeit simplified & watered down) insights. Some of the topics might be dug deeper by our own (due to lack of references). Therefore, a good eye-opener but not much else.

This contained some really interesting insights that we barely look at or engage in during our daily lives.

Had some interesting thoughts on life, love, and self-awareness. My favorite thought is, "Irritability is anger that lacks self-knowledge."

I found this book accidentally, even though I've been following The School of Life on social media and loved their articles. The book is divided into several sections - Self, Others, Relationships, Work, and Culture and each section has essays on various topics. As the description says - 'it's about everything we were never taught at school - how to understand our emotions, find and sustain love, succeed in a career, overcome shame and guilt'. Truly an emotional education.
I was in awe of some chapters; overall, the book left me with many positive thoughts. I would really recommend this to my friends who want to understand themselves better, and get some interesting ideas on life in general.

Ver la review completa aquí: https://queereviews.substack.com/p/003-the-school-of-life-an-emotional

Este libro (introducido por Alain de Botton) es un recopilatorio de los diferentes textos que la escuela ha producido a lo largo de estos últimos diez años y se divide en: self, others, relationsips, work and culture.

“We have the technology of an advanced Civilization balancing precariously on an emotional base that has not developed much since we dwelt in caves”

Creo que los textos producidos por la School of Life siempre consiguen plasmar en palabras las distintas complejidades de nuestras batallas emocionales con un gran intelecto y comprensión. Como si de alguna manera te ayudaran a desentrelazar tus pensamientos, experiencias, preocupaciones y ansiedades arroyando claridad, calma y confort. Eso sí, a diferencia de algunos libros de autoayuda, no buscan darte una dosis de optimismo ni decirte que si quieres puedes. Contrariamente, con su tono gentil nos recuerda que todo en la vida tiene sus más y sus menos, que las relaciones en pareja son difíciles, que no habrá ningún trabajo que nos satisfará al completo, y que nunca nos parecerá que somos lo suficientemente felices.

As always, The School of Life is awesome.

I really really wanted to love this because I love other products from the School of Life like their ‚Emotional First Aid Kit‘.

First, what I did love was the book itself as in the binding, the cover and the thickness and softness of the paper used.

Content-wise the intro didn’t speak to me. The next
third I thought was interesting and then I started losing focus and by the 2nd half I was quickly browsing through. It might be better suited as a reference book to look chapters up in particular situations. It sometimes felt too textbook-y for where I‘m at and also following in footsteps of other books I‘ve recently read that were so rich on storytelling.

Great idea for a book. Not in a way that resonated fully with me though