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Essay about Themes in "The Road Less Traveled"

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The Road Less Traveled

M. Scott Peek starts off with "life is difficult." Peck speaks of discipline and how it is the basic tool required to solve our problems. Life is a series of problems and what makes life difficult is the process of confronting and solving problems. These problems "evoke in us frustration or grief or sadness, anguish or despair." yet it is in facing these problems that we gain wisdom, strength and courage. Any problem brings out a certain emotion; feelings and these feelings can be at times very painful. But it is this that helps us grow. A good example he mentions is school, we purposely give our students a set of problems based on their grade level and ask them to solve it and through them learning …show more content…

On the other hand, a genuinely loving individual will often take loving and constructive action toward a person he or she consciously dislikes..." Love for ourselves and love for others will motivate us to endure risks, pain, and discomfort in the service of growth. Peck states what love is and what it is not. Love is not falling in love, Love is not dependence, Love is not self-sacrifice Loves is not a feeling. One thing that stood out in this book was that if the world treats us well then we have no need to punish ourselves. If seeking revenge is our goal in life, then we will have to see that we are being treated badly in order for it to be justified. Also Peck said that love is an action, an activity. This he says is a major misconception. The feeling of love is the emotion accompanying the experience of Cathexis, a process by which an object becomes important to us. We then invest out time, our love into this object. He further discusses his personal experience with his beloved. When she stands there naked, he says, he begins to feel awe. He questions, why awe? Why not horny or hungry? He states that the object of genuine love must be a person, since only people have spirits and capable of growth.

This book speaks through lecture and examples and clearly discusses numerous sociological issues as well as discusses culture, functions, the effects of

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