Some books force you to drop whatever you are doing, find the nearest mirror, look yourself in the eye and ask difficult questions of yourself. ‘What Should I Do with My Life?’ by Po Bronson is one such book.
The first time I read it, more than a year back, I ended up weeping in public at Istanbul airport.
The second time I read it, almost six months back, I decided to start searching for something I could devote my life to.
When I moved into my new house last December, I thought of an excerpt from the book and promised myself that I won’t let my lovely house trap me into a life of complacent comfort.
When I spent a weekend, three months back, reading Judith Levine’s ‘Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping’ and decided to go off consumption for a year, it was another excerpt from ‘What Should I Do with My Life?’ that helped me make the decision –
Shouldn’t I make money first — to fund my dream? The notion that there’s an order to your working life is an almost classic assumption: Pay your dues, and then tend to your dream. I expected to find numerous examples of the truth of this path. But I didn’t find any.