The Stuff of Life
In The Stuff of Life, he offers an anthology of thoughts on diverse subjects, attempting to see the problems of life in the light of human reasoning. While turning his gaze from one intellectual pursuit to the next, in this collection of essays he addresses nature, evolution, religion, literature, psychology, and scientists, sages, prophets, philosophers, thinkers, and poets who have, down the ages, contributed to human development, making life meaningful. From the personal to the societal to the universal, he turns his spirit of inquiry to a wide swathe of topics:
- the love of learning
- man’s search for meaning
- faith, tradition, and rationality; and
- the moral dimension of existence
Simple and direct, The Stuff of Life articulates a viewpoint grounded in a rational approach to life and this world.
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Simple and direct, The Stuff of Life articulates a viewpoint grounded in a rational approach to life and this world.
ISBN 13 (SOFT): 9781532009563
ISBN 13 (HARD): 9781532009587
ISBN 13 (eBook): 9781532009570
REVIEWS
PORTLAND BOOK REVIEW
The book received 4 stars.
The Stuff of Life by Asif Zaidi is a “simple” collection of thoughts and maybe essays from the author. It’s non-fiction “self-help,” but mostly it is meant to be a spiritual guide/philosophy on how to live life and find meaning in it.
The layout of this book is pretty simple. The concepts in this book are probably not earth shattering by any accord. The author lays down commandments a lot of people should already know. Forgiving easily, living in the moment, seeking to look inside ones’ self, seeking to find ones’ self in nature, being cognizant of our egos and how they often seek to perpetuate toxic states of mind, and how sometimes technology gains control of us instead of vice versa.
The author references previous authors and poets who have come before him pretty frequently throughout to support his points, and the over arcing theme of these essays seems to be obvious though it’s a genuinely pleasant read. It’s a good over view of authors and poets whom readers might be avoiding because they find them too difficult or confusing (like Nietzsche, Shakespeare, and Wilde), as the author gives the bullet points of their philosophies infused with his own thoughts and feelings. While the author sort of seems to demonize the Internet and maybe the over-freedom of expression in the new age, most of these ideals and goals can be easily met just by being more present in ones’ life.
There is one theme in this that everyone can hopefully agree on and it’s that if we are more introspective and individualized, we can find contentment and peace in our lives. Through this, we can also hopefully be more kind to each other – and this book sets up a good and earnest path to take when we’re endeavoring to get there. It’s worth a read if a stepping stone to building a better life is something readers want to look into.
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/mbw/apr_17.htm#donovan
MID WEST BOOK REVIEW
A reader might not expect the philosophical perspective represented in The Stuff of Life because its author is a banker and business advisor, and works by such professionals are generally less ethereal and tend to reflect linear thinking processes. Higher-level questions of what makes for a life well lived, how to move into a spiritually awakened state of mind, and employing meditation and other devices to enter into an awakened state and counter the effects of the Internet Age are typically subjects that stem from new age sources; not from the business world.
Therefore, it’s especially refreshing to see such a perspective wound into essays that cross genres in their pursuit of excellence in an anthology of thoughts and reflections considering the basic elements that make life meaningful.
At many different points, Asif Zaidi’s background lends to some intriguing and different introductions to his topics: “Recently I attended a leadership training program for executives. This intense five-day program featured lectures from top executives and leadership gurus like Marshall Goldsmith, Thomas J. Delong, Robert Steven Kaplan, and Jim Loehr. While it was useful, I was amused to see how man’s age-old love for wisdom and quest for knowledge of how best to live have been distilled into skills for success in the corporate world.”
Having a foundation that lies more in this business milieu than in liberal arts and spiritual thinking adds a depth and practicality that many similar-sounding coverages eschew. Add psychological insights and you have a survey that is rich in scope and considerations: “We can only keep our unhappiness alive by giving it time. Remove time and compulsive thinking from unhappy feelings and they die. They cannot survive without a dwelling place inside us, which we must never allow them in any form whatsoever. We only have to truly want them to die. This also transforms our outer life, our relationships, and so on.”
The most satisfied readers of The Stuff of Life will be those seeking a wide-ranging set of essays that analyze the human condition and its social, spiritual and moral concerns. As Zaidi draws connections between human philosophy and religion and the pursuit of happiness, he includes discussions of many notable individuals who have contributed thoughts and approaches to life and whose works have added value to overall considerations of life’s meaning.
The result is a thought-provoking series of discussions that may seem to wander in their scope and presentation, but which ultimately involve readers in analyzing the collective human efforts that lead to a good life well-lived, highly recommended for spiritual and social issues thinkers who would consider connections between philosophy, history, psychology, and the world’s greater purposes.
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/mbw/apr_17.htm#donovan
MANHATTAN BOOK REVIEW
Star Rating: 4 / 5
Asif Zaidi’s The Stuff of Life is a veritable treasure trove of essays bridging a wide variety of philosophical topics. There are several sections, each with a general focus. This book is stuffed with the type of philosophical questions that I, as a philosopher myself, particularly enjoy, even where the spiritual dipped into the religious. Many of the essays reminded me of my own meanderings, while others had me stopping to marinate in a new way of thinking about something.
The very first essay, “What is a Life Well Lived,” really spoke to me. I often get in a brown study, musing over if my own life actually matters. In truth, everyone’s does. For better or worse, we cast ripples that go far wider and longer than ever we could know. This essay reminds us that our legacies long outpace us–and not just in the immediately physical sense of children–and that it is for each person to discover for themselves the meaning of a life well lived. It won’t mean the same to everyone.
Several essays, including one entitled “On Forgiveness,” deal with just that most difficult of topics. Forgiveness comes easy to some, and never to others. It’s a matter of how you choose to think and to interact with life. It’s a topic dear to me, as I learned just how different I am from the majority of my family when my cousin was murdered. While the rest of them clamored for the death penalty, I advocated against it. One mother’s heart had been broken over this. Another’s didn’t need to be.
Oh, but this author’s, nay, this philosopher’s words ring within me. This is a person sharing a similar mind-frame, and with whom I would love to sit and discuss things long into the shadowed night. The myriad topics tie in science, psychology, spirituality, and religion, along with the notion that all we really have are perceptions. Everyone sees the world through different lenses, crafted in different ways.
There are so many other great essays, to discuss them all would be an essay itself! If you enjoy being challenged in your thinking and musing over the deeper things in life, you are sure to enjoy this book. The writing itself is beautiful, though another grammar and spellcheck would not be amiss. That’s the only thing holding back a fifth star.
Reviewed by J. Aislynn d’Merricksson
KIRKUS REVIEW
An assemblage of meditative reflections on the meaning of a life well-lived. Debut author Zaidi, in response to the persuasion of friends, has gathered a collection of short essays (and public addresses) created over the years; the underlying theme is the rational investigation of the meaning of life. That undergirding conceit is sometimes less apparent among the diverse subjects. For example, many of the essays read like paeans to worthy pursuits: Zaidi extols the elemental virtues of art and literature, meditation, reading, education in general, and a commitment to personal growth. There are also discussions on related miscellany, like the advantages and disadvantages of the internet, the problem of disinformation in the media, and the key to public-speaking success. Zaidi’s focus is philosophical; his essays explore the nature of consciousness, the limits of conceptual and dualistic thinking, and the distinction between forgiveness and love. The fulcrum of the work, however, is the relation between faith and reason or the elucidation of our place in the cosmos. The author carefully makes the case for an authentic religiousness—understood as the quest for personal meaning—that is also atheistic and consistent with the findings of modern science. In this way, he attempts to navigate between blind belief and the willful dogmatism of “irreligious extremists.” Zaidi is often exceedingly thoughtful, and his philosophical temperance is impressive. However, the writing can be flaccid and confusing, and it seems to strain too laboriously for profundity: “But regardless of the relative worth of different religious beliefs, the way we are correlated to the environment indubitably substantiates mankind’s emergence from the forms of life which precede us in evolution and which continue to be a part of our psychic nature.” What the book lacks in rigor and originality, it makes up with its intellectual evenhandedness—such ideology-free analysis is rare and welcome in these rancorously divisive times. A flawed but refreshingly mature consideration of life, reason, and spirituality.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/asif-zaidi/stuff-life/
BLUEINK REVIEW
In this book of essays, Asif Zaidi, a banker and advisor to business leaders, takes on fundamental questions of meaning and morality. Zaidi conveys his thoughts in brief essays, ranging over a wide spectrum of topics.
In “Rational Thought and Religion,” for example, the author argues that it’s possible to balance the dictates of religion and science. He believes that religious practice has a valid role to play in terms of how individuals make meaning of their lives, while averring that reason can “foster mediation between different faiths by creating a consensus around the common and the essential.” Zaidi also writes about more day-to-day matters, such as the distractions of our omnipresent devices. He argues that the Internet is a valuable way to stay in touch with family and friends but that it must not replace real-time social interaction.
Zaidi’s approach is moderate and rational. He avoids dogmatism and absolutes, emphasizing that each person must find their own answers. The psychological insight he has gained from his own spiritual life as well as his successful career, balances his work, avoiding the extremes of either ivory tower speculations or bland self-help platitudes.
The author writes in a conversational tone, never falling into jargon. His narrative reveals a cultured mind, well-read in the works of many cultures, from Islam to Ancient Greece, while drawing on the wisdom of authors from Ghalib to Dostoyevsky.
Above all, he conveys a refreshing humanism and a lack of alarmism or extremism rare in an increasingly polarized world. Open-minded readers may find in these pages a means of cracking open the doors of perception just a little bit further.
https://www.blueinkreview.com/book-reviews/the-stuff-of-life/
FOREWORD
In his collection of essays, The Stuff of Life, Asif Zaidi takes on a series of often grand subjects and makes them relevant to the lives people lead, distilling the wisdom of thinkers both ancient and modern to assist him.
Divided into categories such as “Soulful Reflections” and “Human Relations,” Zaidi’s essays approach a wide range of subjects. The collection is at its best when the essays are more instructive than contemplative. Other high points include essays that entail personal disclosures. Essays benefit from the inclusion of details from their author’s life, which provide a firm basis for the insights that are on offer.
The Stuff of Life takes on a broad range of subjects, using the words of great thinkers and the author’s own insights. For readers with a casual interest in philosophy, and those in search of some inspiration of their own, there is much here that is rewarding.
https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-stuff-of-life/
SELF PUBLISHING REVIEW
Former Chairman of the Management Board of Citibank Kazakhstan, Pakistani author Asif Zaidi presents essays on a myriad of eclectic subjects in The Stuff of Life. Not hesitant to weigh in on such topics as philosophy, religion, social issues, anthropology, and even evolution, Zaidi is after finding the very meaning of life in this intriguing and wide-ranging collection of essays.
Zaidi spends a lot of time on the subject of religion, and how it defines or derails us. His focus may not always be popular, but it is certainly interesting. The expectation of the coming of a Messiah anticipated by many of the world’s great religions, Zaidi asserts, makes us complacent. He writes that we must learn to forgive – not, he states, a function of loving, but of learning to cope with life’s events – and make change happen, even if we must do so in isolation.
Zaidi is in many ways a pragmatist; he resigned his post at Citibank because he came to understand that in the corporate world, one must either “step up or step off,” and he chose to do the latter. But he is also surprisingly romantic, rhapsodizing about “The Starry Nights of Tian Shan Mountains” of Pakistan where, he says, “I look up at the sky and surrender.” He unabashedly admires a pantheon of personal heroes, including the famous, such as Nelson Mandela, and the sometimes-overlooked, including Pakistani social worker Abdul Sattar Edhi. Some people, he observes, simply have an innate compulsion to do good, and will inspire others to follow, as Zaidi himself is attempting to do with this book.
In other sections, Zaidi decries regimentation and standardization in all aspects of human life, feeling these will always “eventually shipwreck.” He also criticizes the world wide web (“Is the Internet Stealing Your Life?”) as undeniably an addiction that may “allow us to know more about fellow human beings than is prudent.” In this way, Zaidi’s book can inspire people to action – to change how they view the world and act accordingly.
A major focus unsurprisingly is on Middle East issues. A frequent contributor to such sites as LUBP (“Let Us Build Pakistan”), Zaidi’s work is integral for those who are trying to bring their nation onto the world stage as a respected, rational player. He completes his collection with the poignant true story of a Pakistani teenager who threw himself on a suicide bomber, losing his own life to save a group of school children who were the bomber’s intended target.
Above all, Zaidi is an astute intellectual with a keen eye for human failings, as well as appreciation of human achievement. He’s not a naysayer so much as an accurate observer of people on a societal and personal level. The book is written in strong, erudite prose, and Zaidi expresses his ideas without the slightest tinge of trepidation. It could be said he has taken on too many ideas, but in doing so he displays an expansive knowledge base, and it’s the breadth of his focus that makes the book so inspiring and informative.
Zaidi’s The Stuff of Life will interest anyone who studies the Middle East in general and Pakistan in particular, but also the armchair philosophers and observers of human nature among us.
https://www.selfpublishingreview.com/2017/03/review-the-stuff-of-life-by-asif-zaidi/
DONOVAN’S BOOKSHELF
A reader might not expect the philosophical perspective represented in The Stuff of Life because its author is a banker and business advisor, and works by such professionals are generally less ethereal and tend to reflect linear thinking processes. Higher-level questions of what makes for a life well lived, how to move into a spiritually awakened state of mind, and employing meditation and other devices to enter into an awakened state and counter the effects of the Internet Age are typically subjects that stem from new age sources; not from the business world.
Therefore, it’s especially refreshing to see such a perspective wound into essays that cross genres in their pursuit of excellence in an anthology of thoughts and reflections considering the basic elements that make life meaningful.
At many different points, Asif Zaidi’s background lends to some intriguing and different introductions to his topics: “Recently I attended a leadership training program for executives. This intense five-day program featured lectures from top executives and leadership gurus like Marshall Goldsmith, Thomas J. Delong, Robert Steven Kaplan, and Jim Loehr. While it was useful, I was amused to see how man’s age-old love for wisdom and quest for knowledge of how best to live have been distilled into skills for success in the corporate world.”
Having a foundation that lies more in this business milieu than in liberal arts and spiritual thinking adds a depth and practicality that many similar-sounding coverages eschew. Add psychological insights and you have a survey that is rich in scope and considerations: “We can only keep our unhappiness alive by giving it time. Remove time and compulsive thinking from unhappy feelings and they die. They cannot survive without a dwelling place inside us, which we must never allow them in any form whatsoever. We only have to truly want them to die. This also transforms our outer life, our relationships, and so on.”
The most satisfied readers of The Stuff of Life will be those seeking a wide-ranging set of essays that analyze the human condition and its social, spiritual and moral concerns. As Zaidi draws connections between human philosophy and religion and the pursuit of happiness, he includes discussions of many notable individuals who have contributed thoughts and approaches to life and whose works have added value to overall considerations of life’s meaning.
The result is a thought-provoking series of discussions that may seem to wander in their scope and presentation, but which ultimately involve readers in analyzing the collective human efforts that lead to a good life well-lived, highly recommended for spiritual and social issues thinkers who would consider connections between philosophy, history, psychology, and the world’s greater purposes.
http://donovansliteraryservices.com/april-2017-issue.html#tsol