Most of us live on a tread­mill of sorts, rush­ing from home to work to kids’ soc­cer prac­tices and dance recitals to PTA meet­ings and some­how wedg­ing in shop­ping, cook­ing, clean­ing, walk­ing the dog, work­ing out, and when there’s any time left over, pur­su­ing hob­bies. Whew. Amid our goals, or per­haps cen­tral to them, is get­ting ahead, finan­cial­ly and social­ly. A bet­ter job, a big­ger raise, the lat­est fash­ions, a larg­er house in a bet­ter neigh­bor­hood. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with all that— except for the fact that we can eas­i­ly lose our true selves in the rat race and for­get the things that make our lives gen­uine­ly rich: being a more lov­ing and sym­pa­thet­ic part­ner, pro­mot­ing our val­ues, pur­su­ing inner seren­i­ty, striv­ing for greater humil­i­ty. In a some­what ram­bling fash­ion, Rab­bi Angel reminds us that we are placed on Earth to attain the tran­scen­dent trea­sures of wis­dom, love, spir­i­tu­al insight, and moral courage. By direct­ing our lives accord­ing to these ideals, he says, it’s easy to leave the self-cen­tered­ness and con­sumerism of the rat race in the dust. Angel is the author of 18 books on reli­gion and faith.