A Mystery to be Lived

Life is a mystery that is sometimes wonderful, sometimes tragic, and often something in-between; even very humorous. It is a kind of Rubik’s Cube that asks to be solved. But therein lies the difference: Life’s mysteries are sometimes unsolvable. They just must be lived, and they offer rich memories and lessons to be learned. A Mystery to be Lived is a series of more than 40 personal narratives the author has lived and/or reported on as a career journalist, author, and college professor. The title comes from a thought by Soren Kierkegaard that 'Life is a Mystery to be lived; not a problem to be solved.' The stories shared in this book all happened and were either lived by and/or reported on by Jim Willis. If you’ve never even heard of him, that’s okay. The author’s stories have universal resonance. His stories will still connect with some important times of your own life, and you may just find yourself and your own lived emotions within the pages of his book.Topics in this book range from finding and losing love, to the passions we feel when we fall in love with the arts, to the tragedies of the Oklahoma City bombing, to the euphoria of the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the humorous side of surgery, to the discovery of what religion means to you, and much more. The stories are short and easily digestible. Some take a little longer to tell. It’s a book you put down and pick up when you want, or you may just find it engaging enough to not want to put it down!If you’re from Oklahoma or have lived there, you may find portions of the book very interesting. The same goes for any readers with experiences in Germany. The author is a world traveler, and he has brought all of his stories and lessons learned back to America with him. Now, in retirement, he has the chance to share them as he’s done in his previous two books of Tinkertown: A Wheatfield, an Airbase, and Us, and The Long Pivot Home. Most of these stories are written specifically for this book; a few are recast or adapted from three of the author’s previous books, and some are from his blogs or the writer’s site Retrospect. We hope you find all of them interesting!