In 2014, the NBC news anchor Richard Lui walked into his boss’ office at 30 Rock, expecting to end his career. Instead, something astonishing happened. When he told his producer he needed to cut back on his hours to help care for his father in San Francisco, who has Alzheimer’s, she looked at him and said, “I feel you,” and explained that she was taking care of her mother in Florida. Together, they worked out a plan.
It is this moment of shared humanity that propels the central thesis of the book, “Enough About Me: The Unexpected Power of Selflessness.” Lui contends that selflessness is powerful, the core of a well-lived life. If more of us behaved as Lui’s producer did in that moment, reacting with compassion rather than replacing him with another reporter willing to work 800 hours a week, we might all be better off. Case in point: When COVID hit, Lui voluntarily took a larger pay cut than NBC asked him to, out of loyalty to the company that supported him when it didn’t have to.
In America, it’s a radical thing for a man in a high-profile career to step back to care for his father. The problem is, in a book about the epidemic of “meism” in the U.S., there isn’t quite enough “me” in it. As a news anchor, Lui understands the power of individual stories but seems almost reluctant to fully lean into his.
Instead, there’s a lot of shaggy, freewheeling anecdotes and research about the neurological basis of altruism and how we are becoming more individualistic. Embedded in this are some fascinating nuggets — for instance, language in books has gotten more self-centered in the past 200 years, with more words about personal choice and individualism, and fewer words about other people, respect and duty.
Lui also lays out realistic, concrete ways to be a bit more selfless, such as finding a community-based organization and volunteering just five hours a month, or seeking out people whose values you aspire to.
But I wanted more on how he reached his decision about his job, which, given America’s stubborn notions about masculinity and professional success, is quietly subversive. Lui says he learned that many of his colleagues were caregivers themselves. But what about the ones that thought he was crazy? Thirty Rockefeller Center is arguably the nerve center of Manhattan media. I doubt everyone was patting him on the back.
As a writer, Lui — who grew up in San Francisco’s Richmond District and went to Argonne Elementary — is strongest when he focuses on caring for his dad. His vulnerability when he describes cleaning his father’s adult diapers, or standing paralyzed as his dad, without a stitch of clothing on, closes in for a hug, is powerful. He admits there are parts of being a caregiver he’s never gotten used to. Many of us who have raised a child or cared for a sick relative can relate to that.
But Lui’s argument that selfishness is on the rise during a pandemic rings a tad hollow. After all, more than 2 million women have left or been forced out of the workforce, many because of caregiving responsibilities.
Rather, his most important idea is how he insists on the worth and meaning of care work, which tends not to be valued, economically or otherwise, in the U.S.
Lui notes that when he made his decision, he joined the ranks of the 53 million caregivers in the U.S. Most of these caregivers are informal, unpaid, often balancing their care responsibilities alongside full-time jobs. That’s not an epidemic of selfishness. It’s a crisis of another sort.
Book launch: 5 p.m. Thursday, March 25. Hosted on Crowdcast.io by the Strand Bookstore in New York City. Free. To register, go to bit.ly/luilaunch.
Support: All author proceeds go to the Alzheimer’s Association, AARP and the Asian American Journalists Association. To purchase the book from the Strand Bookstore, go to bit.ly/buy-enough.
“Enough About Me: The Unexpected Power of Selflessness”
By Richard Lui
(Zondervan Books; 240 pages; $27)