Other People’s Lives

We all want to be someone else. We envy others for their successful careers, perfect bodies, fairy-tale marriages and their loving and cheerful teenage children. Envy is nothing new but with social media, it’s so much easier. All it takes is our phone to be reminded of everything we lack and alternative lives where we are never quite beautiful enough, athletic enough, rich enough, or famous enough.

But are we sure that what we want is what we need?

With her ironic, incisive, and profoundly empathetic style, Costanza Miriano takes us on an unexpected journey: a healing of desire. Through the stories of those who managed to overcome temptation (and not by chance, they became saints), she reminds us that the circumstances of our lives, even the wrong, weary, and painful ones, have been placed along our path for a precise reason.

Often, emptiness must exist first, so that it can be filled with the person we are called to become. Desire, too, can be a path to freedom, an encounter with what truly fulfills our heart provided we accept that life is not about obtaining everything we want, but about learning what to desire in the first place.