Editorial July 5, 1993 Issue

Changing our lives moment by moment

Russ Gerber

Recently, while listening to the radio, I happened to catch part of an interview with an author. The interviewer was asking him about his first meeting with a potential publisher. He said it took place in the publisher's office, in a high-rise office building overlooking New York City, where he was proposing an idea for a book about the settling of the West in the United States.

When the publisher began to see what the author was considering, he stopped him and said that very few people buy books about the early days of California or Montana or Nevada. But he had a suggestion for the author. He called him over to the window where they could both look down on the street below, and said to him that if he wanted to write a book about changing one's life, his publishing firm would be most interested. Pointing to the crowds below, he said that there are thousands of people down there, and every one of them wants to change his life. He told the author that there was no end to the books he could sell about people changing their lives.

I started to think about his observation. Certainly there are some obvious reasons why people want to change their lives. When living conditions become unsatisfactory or intolerable, for instance. Or, even when things seem pretty normal, we may see someone who appears to be happier or more successful than we are, and we might feel less content with our own life. This, too, may prompt us to make changes.

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