The Abide Guide: Living Like Lebowski
By Oliver Benjamin and Dwayne Eutsey
Abide University highlights some of the best writings, enlightening perceptions, and exemplary lives of the world’s great minds from throughout history.
And then there are books like The Abide Guide. Not that we intend any disrespect, mind you. As founders of The Church of the Latter-Day Dude (commonly known as Dudeism), the authors themselves shrug off any pretensions of greatness or self-serious blatherings in their laid-back ethos and what they dub its “pile of holy writ.”
This self-deprecating sensibility is what you’d expect to find at the heart of a worldview inspired by equal parts Lao-Tzu from Taoism and The Dude, Jeff Bridges’ iconic character from the Coen Brothers’ cult classic, The Big Lebowski. Drawing from the film and contemplating examples of “Great Dudes from History” like Lao-Tzu and The Dude, The Abide Guide deconstructs delusions and pokes holes in the pomposities that interfere with us going with the flow with dire life consequences:
“Rushing down the uptight way, chasing after bullshit money that never existed anyway, you race past important things in life like enjoying some burger, some beers, and a few laughs, only to crash too soon into the end of your life, where you’re left wondering, ‘Aw, man, what’s that smell?’”
In a world where it’s increasingly difficult to find a humanizing balance between the prevailing extremes of nihilism and absolutism, The Abide Guide nudges us down a more relaxing path that’s always there around us if we remember to heed The Dude’s admonition to just take it easy, mankind.
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To abide is to have balance in life
I think the dude is about do what you have to but don’t get tied into the rat race and forget to just abide and be who you are and live.