Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
"What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?" This is the opening question to The Dance. And like a thematic melody, this is the thread that holds Oriah Mountain Dreamer's book together, as she encourages readers to stop trying to change who you are and simply remember that "who you are is really enough." There are many reasons Mountain Dreamer is such a popular author (her debut book, The Invitation, was a soaring success), the main one being she doesn't pretend to have all the answers. Instead her warm, conversational writing shows us how to "live the questions," as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once beckoned us to do. When Mountain Dreamer yells at her 19-year-old son, even after vowing to be patient, she asks herself, "Why [do] I repeatedly fail to live the intentions that matter to me? I want to know how to narrow the gap between the sincerest desires of my soul and my daily actions." Living these questions isn't easy, but it is the only way Mountain Dreamer wants to dance. Her chapters explore topics such as greed and money, creating love relationships, overscheduling, and solitude. At the end of each chapter she suggests a fitting mediation or exercise. --Gail Hudson |
