I have this theory that there are people who are particularly well-suited to particular moments in history. Like, they could have lived in whatever time, but they were damn good at living when they did live. Charles Dickens was a flawless Victorian. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a flawless Lost Generation person. You know what I mean?
I was not good at the zeitgeist of the 1990s. This whole thing of like, ironic detachment, and not being enthusiastic about things, and the point of television shows being that they’re all horrible people and that’s why it’s funny? That thing was not my metier. I rejoice daily that either the culture has gotten more earnest and gentle, or the internet has made it easier for me to self-select earnest and gentle people to hang out with. Despite the general deceitfulness and awfulness of the political moment, it is a relief to me that we are making a shift, or have made a shift, to valuing gentleness and niceness.
Which brings me to the awfully gentle, awfully nice Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss.
I picked this book up from the library’s New Books shelf in the hopes that it would be as gentle and nice as it sounded. It’s about an economics professor who doesn’t get the Nobel Prize when he expected to, and then gets hit by a bike and has a heart attack. “You gotta follow your bliss, man,” his doctor says; but Professor Chandra doesn’t know how to do that. In lieu of better ideas, he goes to America, to see his youngest daughter, Jasmine. Bliss-following ensues (kinda).
Actually what follows is a book-length journey to the recognition that you don’t always have to tell people your low opinion of the lives they lead. At times I got anxious that the book was going to insist on finding ridiculous some things that are pretty important to me — but I was wrong about that, because it isn’t that kind of book. It also isn’t the kind of book that gives a pass to its protagonist’s failures of empathy on the basis that he is a bit of a bumbler where emotions are concerned. His emotional bumbling has done harm; it was worse harm than he was initially willing to admit (because it always is); and it won’t get fixed by pretending it never happened.
Though the author’s bio indicates that he’s heavily involved with meditation and the practice of Zen, Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss never felt remotely preachy about either of these things. A series of amusing events leads Professor Chandra to a workshop on personal development, and Balasubramanyam doesn’t pretend that some of its practices don’t feel silly. He knows they do! But silly and productive aren’t opposites, and Professor Chandra leaves behind the practices that don’t work for him, and takes forward the practices that do.
I need a new paragraph to talk about how much I love this. We talk a lot about ideological polarization in this political moment, but I also worry about the kind of polarization where everything has to be all or nothing. You believe in a thing (in which case you believe in all the elements of the thing, and you must passionately defend it) or you don’t (in which case you find all the elements of the thing suspect, and you must passionately oppose it). It was wonderfully refreshing to read a book in which the author, clearly, loves Zen monasteries, but also recognizes that not every practice is good for every person. It’s okay, in other words, to be a cafeteria Catholic.
If the world is wearing you out, give yourself the gift of reading Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss. It’s not often I read a book that just makes me feel fucking pleasant, but this book was one, and I really needed it.