Peter Kennedy’s life was like many others. Despite having a loving family, Kennedy’s own neuroses (combined with social pressure) led him to pour himself into professional success at the expense of his personal and spiritual life. When he finally begins to pay attention to his psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs, he quickly realizes the fix isn’t easy; it’s a lifelong commitment to a radically different way of interacting with the world.
Kennedy’s journey will look familiar to lots of disaffected modern professionals and those who know them: sweat lodges, occasional medicine retreats, a series of increasingly extreme experiences, meditation, somatic therapy, and more. But the real gem here is the text’s self-awareness about this journey: it too is a form of ego, of seeking— exerting control through the increasing extremity of experience. Constantly jetting off to try different external interventions is ultimately an avoidance tactic; the real work is internal, and it seeks to find a place of balance, not intensity. This lesson alone is worth the time spent reading the book.
Structurally, however, THE REMEMBERING: A Journey Back to Self wastes too much time on Kennedy’s professional life. The author created two tech services, and one of them in particular demanded an intensive decade of his life. Of course, he has reason to be proud of his successes. Overall, though, this is narrative time wasted in the context of a memoir. It’s clear from the start that Kennedy ultimately finds this world unfulfilling, and the reader already knows that he left this life behind in order to live a more meaningful and grounded one instead. The lengthy discussions of that fast-paced capitalist life not only distract from the emotional arc of the narrative; they tend to feel like spiritual backsliding, distracting both the reader and the narrator from the lessons already learned from the ongoing spiritual journey. Frequently pivoting away from its interesting and rewarding thematic center does this book no favors.
Despite this counterintuitive narrative motion, however, THE REMEMBERING is still a compelling, personable, and often insightful look at the common experience of modern workers seeking meaning outside of capitalist value systems.
Peter Kennedy’s THE REMEMBERING: A Journey Back to Self contains essential lessons about the search for meaning.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader