Atlantic Ave Magazine July 2023

that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and lifechangingly
amazing at best. (I understand that it’s likely
the former, which is a fancy “book” way of saying “the
first one.”)
I talk about my grandparents, doing stand-up comedy
as a teenager, bar mitzvahs, and Jewish summer camp,
and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my
mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures
in Los Angeles, and surely say things about other
famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation
for me at a party one day.”
Life in Five Senses: How
Exploring the Senses Got
Me Out of My Head and
Into the World
by GRETCHEn Rubin
For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been
studying happiness and human nature. Then, one
day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she’d
been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five
senses. She’d spent so much time stuck in her head that
she’d allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed.
This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy
preoccupation into a world rediscovered by seeing,
hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.
In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores
the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path
to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge
science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to
practice what she learns, she investigates the profound
power of tuning in to the physical world.
From the simple pleasures of appreciating the magic
of ketchup and adding favorite songs to a playlist, to
more adventurous efforts like creating a daily ritual of
visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attending
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Flavor University, Rubin show us how to experience each
day with depth, delight, and connection. In the rush of
daily life, she finds, our five senses offer us an immediate,
sustainable way to cheer up, calm down, and engage
the world around us—as well as a way to glimpse the
soul and touch the transcendent. Life in Five Senses is
an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound
insights and practical suggestions about how to
heighten our senses and use our powers of perception
to live fuller, richer lives—and, ultimately, how to move
through the world with more vitality and love.
www.AtlanticAveMagazine.com | july 2023 | 49