Diane Evans DelMio.com A wealth of books to help us cope

A few weeks ago, I wrote in a light vein about books you might read to divert your attention from losses in your 401(k) plan and other investments. And while it’s true that “The Groucho Letters” might bring therapeutic laughs to some, it hit me hard over the last few days that instead of comic relief, some people just need to know where to go from the depths of despair.

Last Sunday, I learned about a man who lost considerable wealth in bank stocks. He collapsed and died over the weekend while still in his late 50s. The next day, I heard about an unemployed dad and former journalist being admitted to detox. And still within a 24-hour time span, I encountered someone else who had lost most of his sales accounts. This third man noted the two books he had on his dining room table: The Bible and “The Last Lecture,” based on the now famous lecture that Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch gave last year, after learning he had pancreatic cancer and only months to live.

Pausch died in July at age 47, leaving a wife and three small children.

Surely he would have traded his cancer for the worst possible financial blow.

But that doesn’t diminish the suffering of those who find it hard to go on because of financial losses in this tough economy. That’s why today is about “The Last Lecture.”

Much like the message from Morrie Schwartz, another dying professor in Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays With Morrie,” the Pausch lecture is about living well and continuing to grow even in the face of crisis.

The title of Pausch’s lecture: “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” A central point is how obstacles and setbacks aren’t the end of the road. Pausch drew from his own life experiences to show how dreams often come true in unlikely ways, perhaps far afield from our visions of what should or would happen. He achieved his childhood goal of becoming a Disney Imagineer, for example, in a roundabout way through a sabbatical in 1995.

The author and rabbi Harold S. Kushner makes a similar point in “The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-Third Psalm.” Consider how Kushner explains the verse “He guides me in straight paths for His name’s sake.” He writes: “The Hebrew phrase translated SSLqstraight paths’ actually says something more complex and more interesting than the translation would convey. It literally means SSLqroundabout ways that end up in the right direction.”

The universal theme is one of hope. It’s a message we all need to hear, and it’s why a YouTube video of the Pausch lecture has been viewed, by some estimates, up to 7 million times. The book, co-written by Jeff Zaslow of The Wall Street Journal, expands on the speech and has been translated into 36 languages. Pausch intended the lecture for his children.

That brings up a point Morrie Schwartz made in “Tuesdays With Morrie”: “The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. ... If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern you get from a family, you don’t have much at all.”

In the end, the wealth that matters.

XDiane Evans is a former Knight Ridder columnist and is now president of DelMio.com, a new interactive online magazine on books for writers and readers.

McClatchy Newspapers