‘Bracing, beautiful … mesmerizing, invigorating, and profound’ Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness
In her late thirties, Meghan O’Gieblyn found herself in crisis. Earlier that year, she had relapsed back into an alcohol addiction she had kicked in her twenties. The year before that, she had been briefly drawn back to the faith she had renounced decades earlier, through a friendship she developed with a Catholic priest.
Both of these events happened in secret, hidden from everyone close to her, and both felt like acts of regression – a return to paths she had walked before. This fundamentally unsettled her belief that she was a unified self with transparent motives. How is a person to avoid those irrational mistakes that they continually return to, despite knowing they are harmful? Can we truly master our will, or are we always divided selves? And can we ever satisfy the deep yearning our compulsions speak to?
In her late thirties, Meghan O’Gieblyn found herself in crisis. Earlier that year, she had relapsed back into an alcohol addiction she had kicked in her twenties. The year before that, she had been briefly drawn back to the faith she had renounced decades earlier, through a friendship she developed with a Catholic priest.
Both of these events happened in secret, hidden from everyone close to her, and both felt like acts of regression – a return to paths she had walked before. This fundamentally unsettled her belief that she was a unified self with transparent motives. How is a person to avoid those irrational mistakes that they continually return to, despite knowing they are harmful? Can we truly master our will, or are we always divided selves? And can we ever satisfy the deep yearning our compulsions speak to?
Reviews
Will and Attention is a feat of uncommon honesty. O'Gieblyn's intellectual rigor and spiritual bravery land her in the firmament of the finest thinkers to take up these two vast, essential, and entwined subjects. A bracing, beautiful book that reads like a fortifying talk with an intimate companion. Mesmerizing, invigorating, and profound