Eleanor Roosevelt Gives Advice about Life

Isn’t she dead?, you might ask. Well, yes. Yet because Eleanor wrote a book, she still speaks, even though she is dead.

More than sixty years after Eleanor wrote You Learn by Living, Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, what reader doesn’t want to live a more fulfilling life? The book was first published in 1960. My used copy is a Fiftieth Anniversary edition, published in 2011, and reprinted in 2020.

I ordered this book because someone said it would make a good gift for graduating seniors, either from high school or college. Books come to me in the most circuitous ways, how I hear about them varies, and I marvel at the timing. But I would not give this book as a graduation gift. Not in 2022.

A Blast from the Past or Sage Wisdom?

Eleanor’s prose soared when she described people, personal experiences, and actual events, then sank where she offered advice. The advice she gave no longer fits the feet of those walking the streets in contemporary America. It’s like Cinderella trying to fit both feet into one slipper.

In the Afterword, Eleanor tells a story to illustrate how one generation attempts to pass on the wisdom gained over a lifetime of learning to succeeding generations. “Even a diamond can have too many facets.”

Many popular aphorisms do not age well, and according to the story she tells, what may have distilled to popular cultural beliefs makes you ”derivative.”

The question then,

”Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire [himself].”

In the story, an elder admits to the younger that even the wisest teacher cannot transfer what he has learned throughout his life. Punch line: “Oh, he meant well.” And Eleanor Roosevelt meant well, too.

Publishing and sales of self-help and advice books have exploded.

The subtitle, “Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life” attracts readers because second only to the sales of cookbooks, people can learn from others. But only if they really want to.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s book title, You Learn by Living, serves as both a declaration and exhortation to pay attention to your life.[1]

“In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”

Her eleven keys are the titles of the book’s eleven chapters, 208 pages.

• 1. Learning to Learn
• 2. Fear––the Great Enemy
• 3. The Uses of Time
• 4. The Difficult Art of Maturity
• 5. Readjustment Is Endless
• 6. Learning to Be Useful
• 7. The Right to Be an Individual
• 8. How to Get the Best Out of People
• 9. Facing Responsibility
• 10. How Everyone Can Take Part in Politics
• 11. Learning to Be a Public Servant

More people buy books than actually read them and fewer still put into practice someone else’s advice for their life. Even advice from a former First Lady, a person of esteemed character and stature who left her mark on history, no one can bequeath their wisdom and experience to someone else. But as readers, we can still learn.

Backstory and a Segue

To my surprise, on page 137, Eleanor mentions a friend of hers, Helen Gahagan Douglas, which triggered a memory and sent me to my bookcase to retrieve a book that had belonged to my mother.

What did I say about timing?

Written by Helen Gahagan Douglas, the book autographed to my mother shows dust jacket wear from my mom’s countless pack up and move––occasions where her books occupied the seat of utmost priority in her car. Thirty years later, I loaned this book to a high school history teacher who tried to keep it.

Helen Gahagan Douglas was the wife of actor Melvin Douglas, but also well-known as a multi-term congresswoman and someone who ran against Richard Nixon for the Senate.

The book Helen wrote about Eleanor’s life (1884–1962) was published in 1964. A large pictorial biography with captions adds to the narrative and honors her friend whom she admired and loved.

From Helen Gahagan Douglas’s book:

“Eleanor’s childhood and youth seemed a pathetic prelude to a life of social martyrdom. Her father was a gallant drunk, her mother a spoiled and beautiful daughter of a beauty more petulant still. She was nuisance and a butt. From earliest girlhood her mother mocked her for her gravity, her prominent teeth, and shapeless mouth. [Eleanor] comforted herself in her journal with the thought that ‘no matter how plain we may be, if we have virtue and trust, they will show in our faces.’ She went to work in a settlement house [2] and came to know the daily aspect of poverty, a running sore on the body politic that astonished and embarrassed Franklin.”

Yet another glimpse into the life of Eleanor Roosevelt, this picture and the tribute by Ralph McGill printed under the picture, underscores the times in which she lived and ways in which she triumphed over opposition, ridicule, and adversity.

Picture this “shameful chapter” in terms of Gatsby-era self-indulgence and the extravagant wealth of some few against Depression era poverty of the many.

“. . . those who profited from the misery of others hated her because she pricked their all-but-atrophied consciences.”

The “all-but-atrophied consciences” pricks my conscience. Especially in the context of how “she got even in a way that was almost cruel. She forgave them.”

The power and freedom that comes from forgiveness is staggering. The Second Commandment remains one eternal truth that triumphs still, when anyone can, as Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. [3]

Dead People and Unchanging Truth

A policy changed in Bible Study Fellowship about citing sources––books, commentaries, sermons––including well-known pastors, radio and TV personalities, when I was teaching the Bible in BSF. Teaching Leaders were then instructed to quote only people who were dead.

Dead people cannot change their minds, their course, switch sides, or become anyone other than who they were when they were alive.

Although Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962, many of her words bear repeating. Her well-lived life bears remembering.

More next time from her book, You Learn by Living.

[1] One of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner, also says “pay attention to your life.” He too repeats the phrase, “in the long run,” which signals how to evaluate what truly contributes to a life well lived.

[2]”Between the 1880s and 1920s, hundreds of settlement houses were established in American cities in response to an influx of European immigrants as well as the urban poverty brought about by industrialization and exploitative labor practices.” https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/settlement-houses-in-the-progressive-era 

[3] Mark 12:30–31