The suicide of an adult son. The cancer death of a toddler. The adult revelation that you’re adopted, followed by the quest to find your family. Multiple tours as an officer in Vietnam. All of these individually would have been the main story line of most people’s book about fear and courage, but in Gordon Livingston’s “The Thing You Think You Cannot Do”, these are just anecdotes, tossed out to the audience to show how normal dealing with the pain of life is. Reading the subtitle “Thirty Truths About Fear & Courage” I expected a typical self help book, but instead it is a deep polemic analysis on how fear effectively corrupts everything we love about society. From page xi he starts in on the harbingers of fear, including religion and the authoritarian regime’s almost all people live under do to xenophobia.
Bomani Armah is The Watermelon Man
Hip Hop Artist and Educator
Bomani Armah is The Watermelon Man 