As with all reviews on this website, our goal is not to provide a complete overview of the book; rather, it is to examine how the book relates to the meaning of life.
About the Book: The meaning of life & The rules is a short book by Jonathon Murray about 58 pages in length. The book is currently found on Amazon Kindle for $1, thus continuing endev42's reviews of bargain bin ebooks on the meaning of life.
Murray, as he proudly notes throughout the work is from Ireland, and in this work, he outlines his 25 rules of life, as shown below from the table of contents and also on his Facebook page.
Murray creates a piece that actually offers decent, but not revolutionary advice for living a good life, which according to him, will ultimately help one be happy, because the pursuit of happiness is the meaning of life. From the onset of the piece, Murray states, This book may be many things, but its heart it's about happiness, about how to find happiness in your life and the many reasons both simple and complex that stop us from finding it. If happiness does not satisfy your inner cravings, he goes one step further to suggest leaving a legacy as a worthwhile endeavor.
But beyond this, it should perhaps be classified as a self-help book rather than one that focuses on the meaning of life. That is, between the tangents, the cursing, and other things, it is a guide on how to overcome anxiety, depression, and embracing human nature. But not a work that really examines the underlying meaning behind the emotions, amidst the relationships, or even the purpose of it all.
Notable quotes:
At the very beginning I told you that the meaning of life is the pursuit of happiness, and that is truly what I believe, from the depths of my heart, but some people might want more, might ask for more of a direction, and it could argued that this is a valid other option for the question of "what is the meaning of life?" Because legacy, legacy is something that plays on all our minds at some point.
Life is great and it is terrible, we struggle and succeed, sometimes we fail but that doesn't give us any right or reason to stop. Cause maybe, just maybe it is the struggle that makes it all real?
Life is short; don't let it be short and boring.
One day we will all be gone, but not today, today we are truly, gloriously alive, and every day we have, every day we rip from the jaws of oblivion is another day we are alive, another day we beat the odds, so don't just accept that your alive, don't just accept who you are, celebrate it.
The downfall of the book include not actually examining the meaning of life (should have had a different title), grammatical errors, and unnecessary cursing. Unlike blogs, internet articles, etc. one would expect a published book to be a bit more polished. For example, take this line which is quite ironic: I think I'm a good writer, I mean I'm wrote a book after all, but is that my ego telling me that, or a genuine reflection of skill? The lack of even bothering with punctuation in some sections really detracts from any wisdom the author does bestow upon us, and that is pretty disappointing; because this book had sparks of potential as a self-help book. As a last example, take a look at excerpt from Amazon about the book from the author:
Book rating:
Overall - 3 Meaning of Life Relevance - 3 Uniqueness – 2 What did we miss? Is the meaning of life anything and nothing?