Think You'll Be Happy, by Nicole Avant

9 Philosophical Lessons Drawn from Tragedy

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Nicole Avant isn’t a philosopher in the typical sense of the word; she’s the daughter of Motown Records executive and legendary “Black Godfather” Clarence Avant, and she grew up chatting over dinner with Quincy Jones, Bill Withers, and many other entertainment legends. In 2021, Nicole’s 81-year-old mother, Jacqueline Avant, was brutally shot and killed by an intruder in her Beverly Hills home. The murder of her beloved mother—admired and loved by all for her natural elegance, kindness, and ability to make others “feel seen”—led Nicole to some important realizations about love, grief, forgiveness, and living life to the fullest. In the heartfelt narrative of Think You’ll Be Happy: Moving Through Grief with Grit, Grace, and Gratitude, she lays out the lessons learned from her mother’s lifetime of service to others, and from the harrowing experience of Jacquie’s traumatic death.

I don’t normally read celebrity memoirs, but I heard an interview with Nicole Avant and thought she was very sensible and worth listening to. For someone who grew up surrounded by fame and fortune, she seems remarkably grounded and circumspect—due, perhaps, both to her devout faith and her no-nonsense upbringing. Nicole describes her parents’ life trajectory from poverty and hardship to incredible accomplishment and wealth: her father, Clarence, grew up in a shack in North Carolina and was kicked out of the house at age 13 for defending his mother from a physically abusive stepfather. Her mother, Jacquie, was raised in Queens, New York, by a self-absorbed mother whose primary act of care was to sign Jacquie up for a beauty contest, thereby setting her on a path toward Beverly Hills.

Both Clarence and Jacquie Avant made sure their children did not feel entitled or look down on others. Jacqueline was noted throughout her life for her philanthropy, and Nicole recounts her mother constantly dragging her from one cause to another. We see this legacy reflected in Nicole’s later work as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas, where she took an interest in prisons and tried to help the incarcerated as much as possible. Clarence, for his part, ensured that his daughter “respected her elders” and considered the feelings of those around her; she recounts one memorable episode from her adult life when her father made her apologize to a secretary she was rude to.

And, of course, running throughout the book is the theme of civil rights, which touched every aspect of their lives and which the Avants contributed to in many ways. Nicole herself was instrumental in Barack Obama’s election campaign, but her mother was a civil rights activist at the time of Emmet Till’s murder, and the family supported Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other important figures in the movement. Perhaps most of all, the Avants were ambassadors for Black culture through music, helping to bring the magnificent talent of artists like Sarah Vaughn and Bill Withers to the national stage.

However, it’s the story of Jacquie’s murder that takes center stage in Think You’ll Be Happy. Nicole recounts the shock and grief of her family and friends, and the question hanging over them all—why her? Why did it have to be the woman who uplifted those around her and gave selflessly to others? Here is Nicole’s answer:

So many people have wanted to know the details of that night and expected me to explain how such a horrific thing could happen to my family. “Why not my family?” is how I’d respond in my head. “Who are we that this couldn’t happen to us?” One of life’s most heartbreaking truths is that bad things happen to good people all the time. (231)

I think you’ll agree that this is a very Stoic answer. (I recall the amazing Jennifer Baker saying the same thing in the context of dealing with her husband’s organ transplant: we never thought it couldn’t happen to us.) In fact, Nicole strikes me as a very Stoic character, although of course she never refers to Stoicism and instead attributes her inner strength to her Christian faith (and her parents’ teachings). So while most people reading Think You’ll Be Happy probably focus on the Bible passages she quotes, I was constantly amazed by the parallels with Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. They are just too remarkable not to share—I am always excited to find present-day examples of Stoic principles in action, even if the person practicing them does not identify as Stoic.

So below I present 10 lessons from Nicole Avant, followed by a Stoic quote on the same topic. I love that Nicole speaks in everyday terms, presenting these deep philosophical lessons in a way that everyone can understand and appreciate. If you enjoy this, I definitely recommend that you read this wonderful book for yourself—there is plenty more homespun wisdom drawn from the lives of the extraordinary Avant family.

Lesson 1. Blessings are on loan

Nicole Avant: Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words “Think you’ll be happy,” but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency. My mother chose to live a victorious life. My mother believed that service was the most thorough way to share her blessings, rather than hoard them (she would say, “Blessings don’t belong to us—they are only loaned”). (150)

Seneca: May all those things come to us, but may they not cling to us; so that if they should be taken away, their departure will not tear us apart. Let us use them, not glory in them; and let us use them sparingly, as loans that will someday be recalled. One who possesses them in an unreasoning manner does not keep them for long: in the absence of moderation, his very abundance is oppressive. If he trusts in these advantages that are so fleeting, they soon desert him; even if they do not, they are still an affliction. (Letters on Ethics, 74.18)

Lesson 2. You always have a choice

Nicole Avant: Imagine this: I have a choice. I either let what happened to my mother define me and rule my life, or I choose something else. I choose to work with energy, every day, and try to focus on being victorious versus being a victim. Every time I find myself slipping into victim mode, I declare, “No! I choose victory.” (337)

Epictetus: If [choice] be rightly directed, a person becomes good; if it be badly directed, he becomes bad. It is through choice that we encounter good fortune or misfortune, and that we reproach one another or are pleased with one another. It is this, in a word, that brings about unhappiness when neglected, and happiness when properly tended. (Discourses, 2.23, 29)

Lesson 3. Celebrate life

Nicole Avant: I would think about this lesson—that life is what matters, not the manner of a death—many times in the months after my mother’s passing. It gave me great comfort, and still does. My mother understood that no one knows how life will end, no one knows what or how long a future is, so the only thing to do is to live fully, to expand one’s horizons as long as one has breath to do so. And when someone is gone, to focus on the good, not the loss. (499)

Seneca: To me, the thought of friends who have died is sweet, even comforting. For when I had friends, I had them as one who would lose them; now that I have lost them, I am as one who still has them. And so, dear Lucilius, do what suits your sense of fairness. Stop misinterpreting what fortune has done for you. Fortune has taken something from you, but it was fortune that gave. (Letters on Ethics, 63.7)

Lesson 4. Memento mori

Nicole Avant: But if there’s one thing upon which we can rely, in a world where everything is in flux, death is the surest constant. It will happen to all of us. Our job is to decide how to face it; how to live after the death of a loved one; and how to live our own lives with the sure knowledge that one day we, too, will secure a final date for our obituary notice. (1007)

Marcus Aurelius: In human life, the time of our existence is a point, our substance a flux, our senses dull, the fabric of our entire body subject to corruption, our soul ever restless, our destiny beyond divining, and our fame precarious. (Meditations, 2.17)

Lesson 5. The art of living

Nicole Avant: I know now that my parents—my mother, especially—truly were preparing me for a terrible day like this. The lesson was this: it’s not about the loss and the death—it’s about the life, the dash between the dates (as my dad would say). That, there, is truly the art of living. (1063)

Seneca: And so, dear Lucilius, make haste to live, and treat each day as a life in itself. A person who prepares himself like this, making the daily round of his entire life, is quite secure…What matters is not how long you live but how well. (Letters on Ethics, 101.10,15)

Lesson 6. Gratitude is the way

Nicole Avant: This gratitude stuff isn’t about being delusional—it’s about acknowledging that life can be hard, and not letting that difficulty define us and make us unable to see the joy and the upsides. (1326)

Seneca: We should make every effort to show all the gratitude we can. For the good in it is our own. After all, gratitude is not justice (as is commonly believed), for justice pertains to others, but much of the good in gratitude redounds to oneself. (Letters on Ethics, 81.19)

Lesson 7. Our loved ones stay with us

Nicole Avant: Part of my forgiveness goes like this: Mom’s life hasn’t ended—not really. She doesn’t inhabit the past tense; she was so alive, filled the dash between birth and death dates with so many vibrant things, that the mere act of her murder cannot begin to end her presence in our lives. (1854)

Seneca: The people we have loved remain with us in large part even after chance has taken them away. The time that is past is ours; nothing is more secure than what has already been. Our hopes for the future make us ungrateful for what we have already received, forgetting that even if that hoped-for future ever comes, it too will swiftly become the past. (Letters on Ethics, 99.4-5)

Lesson 8. Get over the past

Nicole Avant: I started telling my kids that they were too focused on the rearview mirror. We were out driving one day, and one of the kids was complaining about something that had happened. “Why do you think the rearview mirror is so small?” I asked, glancing at them in its little rectangle. Without waiting for them to answer, I kept going: “I’ll tell you. It’s teeny because you’re supposed to look in your past just to grab a lesson. Grab the lesson and then move on. In every adversity there are two positive outcomes: the lesson and the blessing.” (2038)

Seneca: There are two things, then, that one ought to cut back: fear of future troubles and memory of those that are past. One concerns me no longer, the other not yet. (Letters on Ethics, 78.14)

Lesson 9. Keep some perspective

Nicole Avant: This must be our regular question: “What does this terrible or tragic thing make possible?” Turn your perspective around: this is happening for me, not to me. We must endeavor to bring persistence, fortitude, and perseverance to everything we do. Don’t forget to praise. Give glory. Share any honor—better yet, give all honor away. Whatever we do, we should do with humility. Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less. (2641)

Epictetus: “Is it possible, then, to derive advantage from these things?”

Yes, from all of them.

“Even from someone who insults you?”

And what advantage does the wrestler gain from his training partner? The greatest. And that man, too, who insults me becomes my training partner; he trains me in patience, in abstaining from anger, in remaining gentle. And yet you say that if someone trains me in abstaining from anger, he brings me no benefit? It is simply that you don't know how to draw advantage from other people. My neighbor is a bad man? Bad to himself, but good to me. This is the magic wand of Hermes: ‘Touch what you want,’ so the saying goes, ‘and it will turn to gold.’ Bring me whatever you wish, and I'll turn it into something good. Bring illness, bring death, bring destitution, bring abuse or a trial for one's life, and under the touch of the magic wand of Hermes, all of that will become a source of benefit. (Discourses, 3.20, 9-12)

Conclusion

I hope that this review is a source of benefit to you! If you enjoyed these tidbits from the book, I highly recommend checking out Nicole Avant’s Think You’ll Be Happy. She approaches the difficult topics of death and grief in a compelling and inspirational way that is very compatible with Stoicism.