A View of You

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“An honest man is always a child.”

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

-Socrates (probably)

For someone who may or may not have existed, Socrates can certainly be considered a pretty smart guy. He understood that asking questions was just as worthwhile as providing answers, and demonstrated the power of pure scrutiny as a means of acquiring wisdom. However, Socrates’ aim and appreciation for insight was that of a personal nature. Objective, absolute understanding seemed to elude him, just as it often eludes us all.

Mastering life’s mysteries is an inveterate task. People seem to have gained a general comprehension of how to survive, but acquiring a personal sense of meaning, purpose and peace is pretty tough. Happiness comes from appreciation, which often stems from awareness, which usually follows some form of understanding. As occupants of The Information Age, modern humans have access to more data than ever, but is that the same as knowledge? Is knowledge really as reliable as we’re led to believe? Does a factually undisputed reality even exist?

I don’t know. I don’t really know much. But I wrote this book, and in it, I share the stuff I kind of at least thought I knew as a kid. A View of You shares my youthful approach to gaining a sense of meaning and awareness. It offers readers an opportunity to better understand themselves through the combination of my narrative and the interactions they will experience with the narrator (me) throughout the process. The memoir acts as a reflective surface for the reader, which is essentially what we all see when we look out into the world. I view existence as merely a mirror, intimately revealing our personal understandings of life to ourselves, but not what is inarguably there.

What people discern and comprehend, from their personal viewpoint, isn’t an absolute truth. A view isn’t a reflection of an undeniable reality. It is a reflection of one’s self, of one’s experiences and understandings. A view is not an impersonal view of the world. It is a view of you. Of you a view, of you.

The book shares the story of a boy growing up in New York City in the 1980s and ‘90s, following his complex quest for truth, discernment and connection. The makings of his migration from mite to man are at times quite remarkable, and at others rather common. The insights into the mind of a child grappling with life’s most confounding contradictions and riddles in this book are limitless. The storytelling goes beyond honest, as it shrewdly dissects the intuition and psychology of a boy experiencing a lifetime’s worth of complications and calamities in his first twenty years.

And yet, a universal pursuit for meaning is compellingly explored outside the confines of the memoir. Historical connections are examined, etymological correlations are scrutinized, and religious texts are probed. A View of You offers readers a never-before-seen perspective of the world that surrounds them, as well as the existence that dwells inside of us all.