As promised, here are a few notes for the Bateson book.

Creating a few notes for this book raises some interesting questions for me. As I have hinted once before, there is a major difference between reading about Ancient Greece and reading a novel. There are also major differences between those two genres and this book as well. Bateson's book is a non-fiction narrative, sprinkled with numerous personal comments.

Two questions come to mind:

1. Did I enjoy it?  Yes.
2. What did I learn?

At the level of detail of the lives of the 5 women, very little. But at the level of synthesis, two points deserve mention.

1. The book emphasizes the importance of flexibility in "composing a life". All five lives illustrate this, none of the lives were carefully planned and then carried out. This rings true to me, it also reflects my own life.
2. The themes used for the individual chapters provide a number of important categories for capturing aspects of a life:
• friendship
• moving from strength to strength (importance of growth)
• exposure to other ways of doing things
• partnerships
• give & take
• making & keepng (home vs house)
• caretaking
• multiple lives
• commitment
• fits & starts.

This book is written by a woman, and is about women. I doubt very much that if a man were to attempt a similar book, the chapter headings would be the same. Then again, when I slowly review the list, it does fit my life fairly well. My statement two sentences earlier appears to be guilty of gender stereotyping - even though I should know better.

Compassion, caring and communication - the 3 C's of education. Add two more - commitment and computers and we have a good mnemonic for what is important. Including computers in the list is debatable, but I think appropriate.

Here are a few quotes from the book that I like:

• A good meal, like a poem or a life, has a certain balance and diversity, a certain coherence and fit (p. 3)
• ... to look at problems in terms of the creative opportunities they present (p. 4)
• ... rethinking the concept of achievement (p. 5)
• Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers (p. 6)
• ... protected by contracts or union rules from facing the challenges of change. What they lose ... is the possibility of learning and development. (p. 7)
• The knight errant, who finds his challenges along the way, may be a better model for our times than the knight who is questing for the Grail (p. 10)
• The need to sustain human growth should be a matter of concern for the entire society, even more fundamental than the problem of sustaining productivity. (p. 55)
• Composing a life involves an openness to possibilities and the capacity to put them together in a way that is structurally sound. (p. 63)
• If I thought I knew the ideal way of being human, I would teach that instead of the discipline of anthropology. (p. 70)
• In the puzzle of composing a life, the interdependence of one's own work with that of someone else is a major complication. (p. 88)
• The distinction in English between house and home ... is one of our great riches. (p. 118).
• We need attention and empathy in every context where we encounter other living beings (p. 161).