My brother, Gerald, wrote the book advertised on this Amazon page: "Underestimated, Mentally Ill, Yet Successful!" and subtitled "One Man's Journey ... Saved By Medication." https://www.
This book could have been subtitled, "Scrooge ... Saved By Tiny Tim."
Gerald's life story is a page-turner, written from the vantage of an eye-poppingly successful businessman who found happiness despite persistent mental illness.
Predictably, Gerald has taken considerable flak from a few friends (and numerous co-workers at his accounting firm) for being unabashedly open about his experience with mental disease, specifically depression and anxiety.
These critics wonder why anyone would want this "taboo information" exposed as common knowledge.
After all, mental illness is one of the very last "human conditions" that still carries a stigma, and the knee-jerk judgmentalism that follows is devastating.
But here's the nub.
A huge part of Gerald's success has been his candor: he is a straight-shooter who clearly hides nothing.
People want to work with honest people.
And Gerald is so honest, he simply "lays it all out."
Predictably, everyone sees everything.
Even in his professional life, Ger has been so honest that one of his non-profit-sector clients, Sister Serafine -- who was the motive force behind Rochester, New York's School of The Holy Childhood -- came to express her love for Gerald, just as Gerald was open about his agape-love for this greathearted nun.
Ger's autobiography inspires contemplation across Life's full spectrum -- family life, professional life, civic life, religious and spiritual life.
Gerald begins his life story by quoting The Beatitudes (from the Gospel of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount), and proceeds to a description of his Catholic formation in which family, parish, nuns and priests -- from Kindergarten through University -- collaborated to produce an exemplary citizen, and a kind, congenial, generous man.
"The Beatitudes" (aka "The Introduction To The Sermon On The Mount") - New International Version: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205%3A1-12&version=NIV
"The Beatitudes" - The Message: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205%3A1-12&version=MSG
Starting as a kindergartner at St. Thomas the Apostle Grammar School, Ger continued his studies at Bishop Kearney High School, and on through his baccalaureate at St. John Fisher College, where, "accidentally," he learned the skills that made him wealthy.
But Ger reached his "unexpected" occupational goal in such a quirky way that he thought it unfair to make any proprietary claim to his personal wealth, instead considering his money -- first, last, and foremost -- an "accidental" vehicle to make other people happy while discovering, in the process, that unstinting generosity made him happy as well.
Like all five Archibald kids, Gerald loved the Mercy nuns who taught us -- K through 8.
Unlike numerous press reports that spotlight real (and perceived) mistreatment by elementary school nuns -- the Mercy sisters actually taught us not only to value mercy, but to prize Mercy, along with its indispensable twin virtue -- "helpful service to others" -- as the sine qua non of a well-lived life. (Sine qua non is a common expression in Catholic theology, meaning "that without which, there is nothing...")
As a consequence of the Archibald kids' thorough conditioning in virtuous living - with loving kindness uppermost - we all had the opportunity to discover that our lives are only meaningful when we help people "get the breaks" they didn't get when they were young, or were denied to them from the get-go.
In the process, it became clear to all of us Archibalds that happiness results from service-to-others, NOT from getting all "the toys" we want. (It is helpful to remember the motto of unregulated Capitalism: "The one who dies with the most toys, wins." We also have Senator Dick Durbin's motto for the GOP: "We are all in this........ alone.")
Gerald and his 4 siblings, Janet, Kevin, Billy and I contemplate our ultra-wealthy (mostly white) countrymen and tend to feel sorry for them, notably void of happiness and joy, plugging away at the futile task of trying to fill the bottomless hole where joy used to reside before turning their backs on the happiness of youthful innocence; instead, dedicating themselves to acquiring an endless supply of purchasable pleasures -- a "mad hunt" as tediously interminable as Sysyphus' travail.
Decades ago, Gerald confided that "Money is no longer an object for me, except insofar as I can use it to make other people happy."
Read Ger's book and discover just how easily you can achieve profound satisfaction and buoyant high-spiritedness if only you relinquish the fatuity, vapidity, and aimless acquisitiveness of lives devoted to masturbatory self-
Having said all this, there are notable voids in Gerald's memoirs: He did not write anything about two important facets of his life
Ger did not reveal that when his accounting firm -- Bonadio & Company -- started to expand at breakneck speed, finally reaching the milestone of one hundred full-time CPA employees, only Ger and three other accountants were registered Democrats; the rest were Big Business, Big Money, Winner-Take-All Republicans.
The fact is: "We humans cannot be happy without dedicating ourselves to making others happy."
Or, as one of Gerald's kindred spirits, put it:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi's "Prayer for Peace"
As night follows day, if you do not give abundantly, you WILL become spiritually flabby, and often, you will be disproportionately afflicted - in Hamlet's words - by "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to."
Happiness?
Fugetaboutit.
*****
The other significant enterprise that Gerald did not mention in his autobiography is his decades-long practice of giving away -- on the street -- a hundred dollars a day.
Mind you...
Ger is a worldly-wise fellow who does not squander his resources on people likely to use 100 bucks to buy their next bottle of booze, or inject themselves with their narcotic of choice.
Instead, the kind of streetwise generosity Ger has exhibited throughout his life is revealed by the following anecdote.
Whenever Gerald found himself in a grocery store checkout line, he would scan the other checkout lines in search of people to help. And when, for example, he spotted a "single" mother pestered by a passel of gripey kids, he asked the person ahead of him to "hold his place in line," then went to the register where the unruly children were driving Mom to wit's end, and whispered in the cashier's ear: "When the woman in the purple blouse checks out, just ring her up and I will come back shortly to pay for her groceries."
*****
It just occurred to me that when Gerald's autobiography becomes available in bookstores, you might find it in the Do-It-Yourself section.
*****
All's well that ends well.
If you look out on your future and don't like what you see, it's never too late to embrace kindness and generosity, for it is in giving that we receive.
*****
With the publication of Gerald's book, you don't have go back to the Middle Ages or Elizabethan England to learn "how happiness works."
Now you can read, "Underestimated. Mentally Ill. But Successful!" and learn how anybody -- even a 9 to 5 wage slave -- can become happy by following Ger's simple instructions.
Go ahead.
Read the book.
Practice Ger's method.
See if you don't feel happier.
Psychiatrists cost $350.00 an hour. (And often, they don't cure what ails you.
Ger's book costs $14.95.
*****
We Americans live in a culture that is bizillion miles wide and a nanometer deep.
And so, two friends persuaded me that I should not publish "the long version" of my review, which was half social and half political contextualization.
So I followed my friends' advice and wrote a much shorter, much more targeted review.
However, if you are the kind of person who craves contextualization as the only way to arrive at "the fullness of truth," here is "the long version" of my "short" review located immediately above.
My Review Of Brother Gerald's Autobiography, "Underestimated, Mentally Ill, Yet Successful!" (Subtitled) "One Man's Journey ... Saved By Medication"
Excerpt from an article by Nobel Laureate, Paul Krugman
