The Complete Being: Finding and Living the Real You

The Dalai Lama once said, “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” In her book, The Complete Being, Tami Brady echoes this mantra. Approaching the subject from an anthropological perspective, Brady adeptly ties our present identity crisis to the gradual loss of a cultural identity. In her examination, she discusses four aspects required to become a “complete being”: mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical. Delving more deeply into these individual components of the human condition is, according to Brady, necessary because “the game of life has been modified to a point where the rules of the past can no longer adequately tell you how to play the game.”

Brady shares the simple wisdom of this text through a tightly focused, succinct examination of what it takes to become a fulfilled individual. A cursory glance at the table of contents reinforces this tight and unfortunately sometimes rigid organization. While such a structured approach allows for flexibility of reading—one can easily put the book down and pick it up again without worrying about losing one’s place—the repetition of main ideas sometimes feels forced. Much of each chapter is repeated from previous chapters even at the most basic sentence level. However, our tendency to repeat patterns within the framework of our own lives (whether positive or negative) may be seen as analogous to the structure within this text.

In the conclusion, Brady discusses the intention of this book as a means for the reader’s “personal and individualized introspective assessment” of his/her life. The question that spurned the author into changing her own life, why not?, is relevant to the reader as well. Why not give this book a chance to help you know yourself better and perhaps even assist you in changing your life?

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