What Should I Do With My Life?
June 9th, 2006 by Nicole Bulatao, Associate Publisher, Marie ClairePosted in Media (Books, CDs, DVDs, Movies) |
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Author Po Bronson almost lost me on page two, when he wrote about meeting his interviewees’ parents, sharing their secrets, holding their babies, even letting some of them “cry in [his] arms.” I’ve never been too good at handling touchy-feely stuff like that, and when I bought What Should I Do With My Life? I had hoped for clarity and inspiration, not a hug. BUT—that’s one of the few times that the reader gets threatened by too much sap. Despite the “Oh please help me” title and its shelving under self-help in most bookstores, What Should I Do With My Life? is a surprisingly nuanced book, complex, intriguing and worthwhile—a self-help book that really can help you.
What Should I Do With My Life? doesn’t offer any easy answers. This isn’t a step-by-step guide for career changers. What the book does give you are the stories of over fifty ordinary men and women who’ve faced the title question themselves and found their own ways of answering it. People profiled include a lawyer-turned-truck driver, a banker-turned-catfish farmer and a teenage boy handpicked by the Dalai Lama to be a Buddhist monk. The interesting thing is that not everybody interviewed was successful—while the majority did eventually find some measure of peace (and in some cases, overwhelming joy) in their new occupations, a few weren’t as lucky. Most spectacular of these failures was a clueless Hollywood type who dropped everything to enter medicine and then quit two months later because she decided she didn’t, um, like being around sick people. Her story’s far from inspiring (and she comes off, rather unfortunately, as something of a flake) but it does let you know that there are people out there who are struggling with this question, and maybe having a harder time of it than you.
Ultimately, I feel that that’s precisely what this book’s use is. What Should I Do With My Life? is reinforcement, encouragement, proof that your nutty idea of leaving your job at XYZ Corporation to be a yoga instructor isn’t as original as you thought. Career-change courage in 370 easy-to-read pages.
