TOP DRAWER BOOK REVIEW
by
HL Carpenter

 

What Should I Do With My Life?
By Po Bronson
365 pages; hardcover; $24.95
Random House, New York, 2002

This book was ranked #8 on the Wall Street Journal’s Best Selling Books list the week it was reviewed.

What should you do with your life? If you’re asking because you’re searching for a career that will let you ‘follow your bliss’, look elsewhere.

What Should I Do With My Life? is not a career guide, though the passages that describe occupations of those who truly love their work offer insights and are quite interesting.

Instead, the book is a collection of interviews about people who seek – and are still seeking - how to make their lives meaningful. Author Po Bronson – a seeker himself - believes ‘interview’ is too shallow to describe the way he gathered the life stories included in the book, and perhaps he’s correct. ‘Session’ might be a more accurate word.

Either way, what emerged are real stories about real people facing fears, taking chances and struggling with expectations – their own, as well as those of their loved ones and the society they’re part of – in order to find meaning in and from life. In the author’s words, “The book is about people who’ve dared to be honest with themselves”.

Maybe. But don’t expect definitive answers. Not only is this a question you have to answer for yourself, but quite a few of the people featured in the book have not yet found resolution in their own lives. Those who think they have are often unable to describe how they reached it.

To borrow a term from the author, that’s the MacGuffin in What Should I Do With My Life?. The book is not so much about answering that particular question as it is about what happens when you ask. At its heart, the book is simply the voice of a new generation seeking a solution to the same dilemma people have faced for centuries.

It’s also about affirmation. What should I do with my life? You’re not alone if you raise that plaintive cry. There are plenty of others trying to figure it out, too.

Whether their stories will inspire you, discourage you, or make you realize how far along the path to enlightenment you already are is another question.

 

Review originally published July 2003.