(You should go read the article. And if you have twelve minutes, you can listen to the Talk of the Nation Broadcast at the same link.)

In a nutshell, an online magazine asked readers to summarize their lives in six words. The results were compiled in a book titled Not Quite What I Was Planning.

I’ve been thinking about this for the past few days.

After throwing around combinations like “Two Kids Later, Fifteen Pounds Heavier” and “Will my hair be short forever?” I’ve decided to go with the following six word summary.

Amateur Craves Pancakes, Yarn, and Wit

If you could summarize your life in a half dozen words, which words would you choose?

 I read an article about Nando Parrado, one of the survivors, and he said the most amazing thing. It comes at a part of the story when he and another survivor decide to hike out, thinking that they are not far from civilization. When they crest a mountain, they find out that they are very wrong and that they are very, very far out in the middle of a mountain range:

The horizon was crowded in every direction with snow-covered mountains, each as steep and forbidding as the one I’d just climbed. I understood immediately that the Fairchild’s copilot had been badly mistaken. We had not passed Curicó. We were nowhere near the western limits of the Andes. Our plane had fallen somewhere in the middle of the range.

In that moment, all my dreams, assumptions, and expectations evaporated into the thin Andean air. I had always thought life was the natural thing, and death was simply the end of living. Now, in this lifeless place, I saw with terrible clarity that death was the constant, and life was only a short, fragile dream. I felt a sharp and sudden longing for my mother and sister, and for my father, whom I was sure I would never see again. But despite the hopelessness of my situation, the memory of him filled me with joy. It staggered me—the mountains could not crush my ability to love. In that moment, I discovered a simple, astounding secret: Death has an opposite, but it is not mere living. It is not courage or faith or will. The opposite of death is love. How had I missed that? How does anyone miss that? My fears lifted, and I knew that I would not let death control me. I would walk through that godforsaken country with love and hope in my heart. I would walk until I’d walked all the life out of me, and when I fell, I would die that much closer to home.

The opposite of death is love. The only way we make a life, a real life, is to love.

The original article was published in Outside Magazine in May 2006.

Nando Parrado has a book called Miracle in the Andes.

The Top Shelf books have changed over the years. Bridget Jones’s Diary was a Top Shelf book after I had it signed by Helen Fielding. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler has been on and off of the top shelf for several years. Letters of E.B. White is on the top shelf. The House of Mirth is a top shelfer. The Ground Beneath Her Feet has recently earned a Top Shelf spot, right next to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which was off the shelf for a bit, but jumped back on just last month. The only book that has held a Top Shelf position since the beginning of the Top Shelf concept is The Art Spirit.

Recommended by a friend several years ago, The Art Spirit is a compilation of theories and beliefs held by the American artist, Robert Henri. The book is not necessarily meant to be read cover to cover, although I’ve read it that way a number of times. It’s best read in the way that my grandma used to read the Bible–when you have a question, pull the book off of the shelf, open it up to any old page, and just start reading.

This morning, because I was a bit nervous about my first Flawed but Authentic entry, I pulled The Art Spirit off of the shelf. I opened it to page 265.

“Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it. It is not good to wear lace that was a drudgery to someone to make. The lace, as well as the picture, should be made in joy. His works are full of the beauty of his enthusiastic interest in life. All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.”

And here is where I should probably say something like, “Ok, friends. It’s time to dance and sing and joyfully weave words!”

But I’m not really dipped into that kind of sprinkle, am I?

My favorite sentence in The Art Spirit:
There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.

I’ll leave you with that.