Wanting Everything: Art of Happiness - Tapa blanda

To be human is to suffer. We enter this world expecting that we can have everything, but we learn very quickly that we can't always get what we want. The accompanying and constant feelings of loss, frustration, anger, aggression, resentment and sadness can dominate us for the rest of our lives.

The strategies we evolve to cope with these feelings – greed for possessions of power, a propensity for assuming responsibility for everything, saddling ourselves with guilt for the world, martyrdom, envy or utter selfishness – do not lead to happiness. But Dorothy Rowe shows us how, once we understand the nature of our longing and the conditions that prevent its fulfilment, we can arrive at a state of wanting which does hold the possibility of fulfilment, and which does lead to happiness.

"'Wanting Everything' is such a startling book, so eloquent in its intelligence and in its compassion, in its requirement that we pay attention and reform – and in so doing remake not just ourselves but society – as to have the force of a modern-day bible"
FAY WELDON

"Dorothy Rowe is essentially a chronicler of emotional pain, a suggester of solutions. Her perspective on existence acknowledges sadness, pain, anger but it instantly makes things seem meaningful"
GUARDIAN