Customer Reviews

Unfinished Business: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Lee Kravitz may have neglected friends and family for twenty years while building a career, but when he got kicked out of his high-flying job, he didn't look for another one. Instead, he spent a year tracking down the people with whom his relationships were left dangling. Tying up this "unfinished business" became a spiritual practice that many of us might well undertake.

Few of us, however, have as many colorful stories, and it's Kravitz's ability to parcel out the fascinating bits as he digs deeper into what really matters to him and to his wife and children, his parents, aunts and uncles and long disconnected friends and mentors that make this book compelling. I loved it.

He starts with his schizophrenic Aunt Fern, emotionally if not physically abandoned in a nursing facility not far from where she grew up. Fern had once been Kravitz's favorite relative, a gifted pianist and a sharer of secrets, but when Kravitz contacted her social worker, he learned that she had received only one visitor in 14 years--and it wasn't a relative. He visits her, deeply reconnecting and making sure that other members of his extended family know how to do the same. Some do.

There are nine more such stories in this book. Like his father and grandfather, Kravitz (in his fifties) was a workaholic, but unlike them, he enjoyed an elite and rigorous education. It turns out he was paying attention when the reading turned to Camus and Buber and even the Gospels. He also married a good woman, Elizabeth, who shipped him off to a yoga center in Massachusetts to sort himself out when he got fired.

While he stays close to his roots as a Jew, Kravitz is not afraid to learn from the world's other great religions, and he touches on most of them. Seekers of all persuasions will find inspiration here.

The simple truth is that all of us have good intentions, but nine times out of ten we don't act on them. The little things--'Oh, I should send a sympathy card' that we think of but fail to do can be brushed aside with the excuse that we are busy. But the larger things--emotionally abandoning a difficult relative--can wear on us. I like the premise of this book, and I like the spare but honest writing style of Kravitz. I think the book gets a bit bogged down in his attempt to render up long philosophical conversations about religion, but I do think there is something for everyone in this project.

Recommended.

This book attracted me because, I, like the author had a life altering event that is causing me to take a hard look at the way things are and the way things should be. He lost his job, and fortunately, unlike most people, had enough money stashed to take a year off to get his life in order. I'm not sure if I agree that going back over all hurts is a good thing, but he is determined to make right many of the mistakes he has made while he was completely absorbed in his work life. His family are strangers. He's lost touch with relatives and friends and even opted to work instead of going to his beloved grandmother's funeral. This book is his journey back from isolation and single lens focus to a broader, more balanced life. It will draw you in whether you believe in restitution or not. I found things in it for me that may help me on my journey as well.

Book Overview

Lee Kravitz was a self-described workaholic, who freely admits that he let his job dominate his life at the expense of his family. So when he loses his job as a magazine editor at the age of 54, it is a wake-up call to him. Stunned and shamed by the loss of the his job--the one thing that provided his identity for so long--Kravitz finds himself at loose ends.

His wife suggests he attend a yoga retreat to help him deal with his feelings of loss and hopelessness. At the retreat, he realizes that he can take a year to take stock of himself and become the type of person he would really like to be. He ends up realizing that to move forward, he needs to take care of unfinished business from his past. He then compiles a list of ten areas in his life where he has unfinished business to take care of. These tasks include things such as:

* finding a long-lost relative
* making a long-overdue condolence call
* reaching out to a distant friend
* letting go of a grudge
* healing a rift in the family.

Each chapter of the book details the story behind each item of unfinished business and how Kravitz goes about tying up these loose ends in his life.

My Thoughts

It is a shame that I read this book right after The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Both are inspirational memoirs, but the comparison really ends right there. Whereas I felt uplifted, inspired and awed by hearing about William Kamkwamba's life, I was not too inspired by Mr. Kravitz's story. For one, it was difficult to empathize with him. Although I can sympathize with the feelings of loss and shame that can accompany a job loss in middle age, Kravitz was not plunged into a difficult financial situation. He had money enough to live comfortably for a year--as well as maintain two residences (an apartment in New York City and a country house). Although he might have felt a loss of identity, he didn't want for something to eat or have to worry about providing for his family--a situation uncommon for most people who are victims of downsizing or layoffs.

Secondly, much of the unfinished business that Kravitz feels compelled to attend is a result of his own workholism and consistent choice to let his work take priority over everything else. By putting his work before people for years and years, Kravitz is really the architect of many of his own problems. He briefly talks about the impact that his long work hours had on his family and his wife Elizabeth, yet not one of the his unfinished business tasks directly involve spending more time with his family. Although some of his attempts to make peace with his past tangentially affect his relationships with his immediate family (for example, he coaches his son's baseball team as a way of reconnecting with his father and an old friend), much of his unfinished business involves taking trips to various locations to meet up with and make peace with long-lost friends and family members. Part of me kept thinking: "You admit that you ignored your family for years by putting work first and now you are traveling all over the country to visit people you haven't seen for 20 years in order to lay to rest some issues from your past?!? Seems to me like you should start with your wife and kids first." To me, it felt as if Kravitz chose to put this personal project of completing unfinished business before his wife and kids once again.

I also didn't get emotionally involved with Kravitz's story. His writing--while competent and clear--just didn't connect emotionally with me. It felt a bit dry and distant. Perhaps his journalism background is to blame. It could also be his emotional make-up is more "masculine" than "feminine," which tends result in a more "this is what happened" approach than "this is what I felt" approach. Although Kravitz is candid and open about his own shortcomings, I didn't feel a sense of connection with him. In a memoir, I think that is essential to truly enjoying the book.

I feel like I'm being very harsh on this book, and I'm not entirely sure why. The stories that Kravitz tells are somewhat interesting and filled with good advice and intentions. I suspect that many people will relate to the things that Kravtiz works on throughout the book. How many times have we put off making a condolence call because we felt awkward about it or didn't know what to say? How many of us made a promise that we never kept and then regretted for years afterward? How often do we really go back to thank our mentors and let them know the value of their guidance? I do think there is value in taking care of unfinished business before our time here on earth runs out. I'm sure most of us would benefit from taking some time to think through our own lives to identify our own areas of unfinished business and taking steps to resolve them. In thinking back on my own life, there are a few areas that I would like to tie up into neater packages. But I do think the key is to not let the truly important moments go by and to keep your priorities in focus every day.

My Final Recommendation

Although I like the idea of taking time to resolve any unfinished business in our lives and the book is competently written, I wasn't emotionally drawn into Kravitz's story. However, I could envision a certain type of reader benefiting from this book--for example, an emotionally distant professional male might relate to Kravitz's story and find more inspiration and value in it than I did. In addition, readers who have a lot of unfinished business of their own might find much of value in Kravtiz's journey and approach to tying up his own loose ends.

Kravitz's book has an intriguing premise - taking care of unfinished business in your life cleans up the guilt, bad karma, debts, unhealthy family dynamics, and other loose ends that weigh you down psychologically. And living like this is a good spiritual practice that will increase your psychic energy and the joy you experience in your life.

Kravitz's own experience with this practice, prompted by the major blow of losing his job (he's a self-described workaholic), is interesting, moving, and inspiring. In the course of a year he visits an institutionalized aunt, helps his father and uncle reconcile, reunites with old friends, pays a debt, makes good on a promise, and incidentally improves his relationship with his wife and children.

Recommended.

Everyone has unfinished business. And it generally does not appear on our personal radar screen unless life comes to a hard stop, and for many, it is too late.

I observed this first hand in the early 1980s as President of American Hospital Supply's Heyer-Schulte Division when we entered the surgical oncology market. I had several opportunities to visit many of our country's leading Comprehensive Cancer Centers (Sloan-Kettering, MD Anderson, Fred Hutchinson, et al) and met cancer patients from all age groups who were facing death. I gained a number of valuable insights including "taking care of business...particularly, unfinished business."

Award winning journalist and author, Lee Kravitz, in "Unfinished Business" shares his journey of "taking care of business" after being fired from his position as editor-in-chief of "Parade" and life came to a hard stop. Fortunately for Kravitz, he had both the time and resources to address his unfinished business.

Kravitz admits to being a addicted to work and failing to be a full participant in life, both his and his family's. He notes that "addicts are more likely than others to lie, steal, cheat, and commit adultery. Imagine how much bad karma an addict carries around in his bag. Imagine how much hard work and willpower it takes for him to lessen his load."

Kravitz begins by seeking out Aunt Fern, an aunt who was in his camp as a young man, but, with the family's concern over her mental health, abandoned with the family. She had been left to her own world, a special-care facility, for years with only one visitor in the last fourteen.

His second objective was to reach out to a childhood friend, Andre Parhamovich, the star right fielder on his baseball team that won the Ohio State Championship. Andre's daughter, Andi, was killed in an ambush by Sunni insurgents in Iraq. Kravitz struggled to send condolences but never got anything off.

The journey continues with Kravitz paying a bill that was unpaid for years, seeking a Pakistani roommate after 26 years of not replying to the roommate's invitations, trying to resolve what was behind a high school teammates bullying of him (anti-semite?), reconnecting with a spiritual mentor, visiting an old friend who marched to a different drummer and became a Bishop in the Greek Orthodox Church, fulfilling a long ago promise to provide books to Kenyan refugee camp, and most importantly, repairing a relationship with his own father.

Each story is poignant and will stir up memories of an unfinished past for all of us. Kravitz observes that "the situations that become our unfinished business are messy and complicated. They also involve our deepest fears...Those fears weighed me down and held me back both at work and in my relationships. They contributed to my becoming someone who worked compulsively, putting my job ahead of everything else."

Our unfinished business is not "about resting in peace," but about lifting those anchors that keep us stuck, allowing us to move forward and reach our potential.

This was a brief, interesting read. After being fired from a job editing a major publication, Lee Kravitz decides to use his time to go back and take care of "Unfinished Business." This ranges from family obligations to saying "I'm sorry" to an old friend to revisiting a promise to an African boy to stock a library for a village.

I was hoping for something really deep, maybe a tale of travel and culture, but it's really just a light memoir. Certainly interesting and inspiring, but not life changing.

Worth the read.

Having also been laid off from a corporate job after 10 years of servitude, I found the premise of this book to be one that attracted me more, at the beginning, as a manual for using your time to complete whatever it was you started but couldn't finish because of work. I was thinking more about fixing this or that, finishing projects, reading that stack of books etc. I must say I was surprised that this was much more than what I'd expected and 1,000 times better than Eat Pray Love for many reasons. In the book, Lee Kravitz details a year in his life after layoff where, in sorting through the objects of his past, he begins to face the things he either left behind, buried deep inside or simply, was too darned scared of to deal with during other times in his life. Lee's list included relatively small matters like repaying a $600 loan to a friend he traveled with in youth but had lost track of to (emotionally) larger matters like expressing condolences to another friend whose daughter had been killed during an ambush in Iraq. In the process, he strengthens bonds with his children, wife and father (this was more of an understanding and acceptance of his father), rekindled dormant friendships and renewed relationships with extended family members through his efforts to bring some cheer into the life of a long-lost relative. I think what affected me most was his industriousness in completing his list (along the lines of completing the tasks at hand, one-by-one-by-one-by-one) without underestimating the therapeutic benefit of focusing on something other than yourself (which could get dicey when one loses a job). The reason I say I found this so much better than Eat Pray Love was because the writer began his journey from home base without the luxury of a new environment from which to regroup. He tackled each item bit by bit while coming to terms with and building upon the life he had already created. There was no running away with a few hundred thousand dollars and an assignment. It was Lee Kravitz surrounded by the past, his fears and lots of lost time to make up for.

There are a number of lessons which can be gleaned from reading this, but I find I have to comment on Mr. Kravitz's writing ability which I found refreshingly flawless.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It really inspired me to take an accounting of my own life to see what may have been overlooked and what opportunities there are to make amends.

Please read this.

Like other reviewers, I was intrigued by the book's premise and i like memoir. So I jumped at the chance to get a review copy.

Kravitz is an excellent writer. Yet as I read the book, I felt that I was visiting someone who was determined to take me through the pages of an old family album. The stories were fascinating to the family but not reall riveting to an outsider.

I also began to question the premise of the book. Many traditions suggest that it is important to make amends to others for wrongs we have done. One character in this book, a Pakistani who becomes a psychotherapist, says it's important to get rid of old baggage. Yet many of the instances Kravitz describes seem fairly minor and even mundane.

Fern's story was moving because Kravitz was able to make a real dent in her life. She lived alone in some sort of benevolent assisted living facility with no visitors. For some of the others with unfinished business, I got the impression that the business was unfinished only to the author. They had moved on with their lives. He had borrowed 4600 from a friend but never paid back the money. The friend had moved on and forgotten the debt. He stopped writing to his close friend and roommate; the friend went on to become successful.

Ultimately, Kravtz seemed to need a year away from the rhythm of his work to do something totally different yet meaningful to him. We're setting so many books about doing something for a whole year that a new sub-genre of memoir has evolved. I'd liek to know more about where Kravitz is now and what he got from this year. The "year off" idea is compelling. How you use it seems to be up to you.

We all have moments in our lives that we'd do over again if we could. Things that we regret we said, or things we're sorry we didn't say. But most of us just try to tamp down the memory of our failings and console ourselves with the thought that we'll do better next time.

Lee Kravitz goes one step better. After losing his job, and beginning to wonder whether work is all there is to life, he embarks on a year-long quest to right some past wrongs, or if not wrongs, at least actions he regrets. And his range is global. His first quest is to track down a relative his family had literally abandoned in a care facility. His final quest is to make good on a rash promise he made to a child in an impoverished African village.

What I found most interesting about Mr. Kravitz's journey was that when he completed each self-imposed task, he not only atoned for the past but he changed his future. As a result of his "searching and fearless moral inventory" as AA would call it, he becomes a different person. He says it like this, "If I had learned anything on my journeys to complete my unfinished business, it was that reaching out transforms you. Every time I extended myself to someone else, something good happened--and I became a happier person."

I would have given the book five stars if I felt that Mr. Kravitz hadn't run out of steam -- or time -- toward the end of the book. Anticipating the African moment that the back-cover copy makes so much of, this quest is a let down. He doesn't go to the village; he doesn't try to track down the child he promised a library of books to. We get no denouement at all. The chapter ends with his daughter suggesting they send a box of books to Kenya; we don't even get to go with them to the bookstore to choose the books. I would have rather he extended his self-imposed deadline and gotten on a plane. The emotional payoff would have been more genuine.

I also felt that in a couple of quests, Mr. Kravitz backs off from the most important thing he could have done to close the circle: apologize. Weighed down by his failure to send a condolence card to a high school baseball teammate whose daughter was murdered in Iraq some years earlier, Mr. Kravitz attends a function in her honor, talks to his friend, and rekindles the friendship around their shared interest of baseball. But he never addresses the subject head on. Maybe it's a guy thing, but I was expecting him to ask forgiveness. Same goes for his abandoned relative. "I'm sorry" is the hardest thing for us to say, but it teaches us humility. That's what enables us to act differently going forward.