The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man

For people trying to thrive in uncertainty, iterative and incremental development is a consolation. It says, don’t try to solve everything. Stop demanding answers to every question about your life and career. Look instead for a small step forward. Just answer the next question. Find the next step. And take it.

He wrote about trusting yourself enough to take risks. About opening yourself to opportunity and being ready to seize it. About finding beauty in the world: the thrumming rain, the ephemeral rainbow, the glow of sunrise. Be soft sometimes. Cry when you need to. Make some mistakes. Learn from them.

Work hard. Spread joy. Take a chance. Enjoy wonder.

Live, learn, and move on.

Charlie was a man of action. He wrote in definitive commands. Think freely. That’s where he started, boldly. Practice patience. Smile often. Savor special moments.

“If you’re negative, your whole body suffers. A negative person falls apart, because the food that is supplied with optimism is not present.” An optimist does not deny darkness. Optimists like Charlie refuse to sink into it, to hide in it, to surrender to darkness.

Charlie made an art of living. He understood, as great artists do, that every life is a mixture of comedy and tragedy, joy and sorrow, daring and fear. We choose the tenor of our lives from those clashing notes.

In the grip of depression or anxiety, any affirmative step is better than paralysis. Action promotes more action; decision produces decision; living generates life.

In other words, without fear, there is no courage. One who senses no danger feels no apprehension. One who feels no apprehension has no desire to run away. Lack of fear, in Rachman’s terminology, is not courage. It is simply ignorance of danger.