Blogmas Day 10: 100 Rules for Living to 100 by Dick Van Dyke REVIEW

Hello! Welcome to Blogmas Day 10!

In honour of Dick Van Dyke’s 100th birthday later this week, I thought I’d read and review his new book, 100 Rules for Living to 100. But first, today’s jigsaw puzzle.

Advent Calendar

Some of the pieces in this puzzle were a bit worse for wear, with some pieces bent or even ripped. So maybe the people who owned it first and did the puzzles before returning them for a refund were getting frustrated with them by this point. I was still able to complete the puzzle without any problems, though.

100 Rules for Living to 100 Review

Dick Van Dyke has been a major part of my life for as long as I can remember. Between Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins alone, he was on my TV a few times a week throughout my childhood. As I got a little older, I was a huge Diagnosis Murder fan, and somewhere in there I also watched The Dick Van Dyke show and several of his other movies and TV appearances. He’s always had one of those faces that can make you smile just looking at him, you know? And his Hushabye Mountain recording from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is one of the warmest and prettiest things I’ve ever heard:

Living to 100

Dick turns 100 on Saturday (Dec. 13), and I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing him many many more birthdays to come. We’re losing too many of our few remaining pure souls! What are we going to do when we lose him, too? 😭

Thankfully, he has left us this book as a guide to living long, happy lives like his. And let me tell you, it’s not just a gimmicky title. This book is packed full of wisdom and gentle guidance that really can help you to get the most out of life. We might not all live to be 100, but the trick to being happy and healthy into old age is having a laidback, optimistic attitude, and this book tells you how to make that happen.

Not a memoir

I just want to make it clear here that this is not a memoir. It’s more of a collection of anecdotes from Dick’s life, through which he shares the life lessons he’s learned. Many of them he learned the hard way – for a guy with such a squeaky-clean image, he doesn’t try to hide his battle with alcoholism or his failed first marriage. But the point is that he did learn, he grew as a person, and he nurtured his optimism rather than allowing himself to become bitter. You really get a sense on every single page of what a lovely human being he is, and I feel like I learned more about him from this book than I’ve learned about any celebrity from their actual memoirs.

Find your passion and your people

Two of the “rules” that stood out to me the most were “Find Your Passion in Your Past” and “Find Your People – A Story in Several Parts.” Both of these chapters are near the beginning of the book, but I’m still thinking about them days after reading the whole thing. For “Find Your Passion,” he gets us to join him in a little exercise where we sit back and try to find the answer to one question: “What is my first memory of doing something I love?” (p. 19). I did the exercise and immediately recalled my earliest memories with books. In that moment, it truly sank in for me that books have been my lifelong passion, so getting an English literature degree and starting a book blog were the absolute right choices for me.

As for “Find Your People,” I’ve struggled with that a lot throughout my life. I can think of only two times when I found online communities that I felt at home in, and both times they were short lived. The last couple of years, I’ve been trying to come to terms with being alone but not lonely, believing that it’s too late for me to find another community where I fit. But then Dick talked about finding his “people” only 3 times in his life, one of which happened in his late 70s! He says, “All of us have found and lost our ‘perfect playmates,’ probably more than once. Yes, we can mourn and miss them. But they’ve left us with the tools we need to find new playmates, for a moment or forever, wherever and whenever we want” (p. 43). I found that so beautiful and encouraging.

In conclusion

Everybody should read this book. Even if you don’t know Dick Van Dyke’s work (which you really should fix, btw), I guarantee you’ll be blessed by his wisdom and his sense of humour. This was an easy 5 stars.

You can buy 100 Rules for Living to 100 here on Bookshop.org*, or look for it wherever you get books.
*As an affiliate, I’ll receive a small commission from any purchase made through this link, at no extra cost to you.