Work life trajectories scatter like free radicals, making this book a potential insight for writers who collect from the real world around them in search of believable personalities and inner life questions. And many writers do. Bronson is a detective, a gossip, a personal psychiatrist and an intriguing writer as he delves into the reasons behind the story and the quirks of personality that get him involved in the business of nurturing the spirit; not just the wallet.
There’s the self-proclaimed Phi Beta Slacker who continues the pursuit of the thrill and audience acclaim of an early ballet career in the air of high-paying corporate work. To her, he inserts his definition of the intellectual nuances of intensity vs. Passion for the work.
There is the man who worked his way up from the proverbial mailroom to a highly successful financial salesman. He rubs shoulders with co-workers and clients that his childhood had not emotionally prepared him for, though he peppers his social life with very interesting women he was prepared for. He dropped everything to be an accountant for a school district, forcing him to learn, “you can’t go home.” They don’t want you either. So he went to work to get back up. In the end, he settles down as an expat and shares a room with a foreign girlfriend, theoretically on his way to living happily ever after. Bronson mused with him that maybe “being an outsider is what someone might need to feel at home.”
The first and last stories are bookends of men who found a place in life by openly allowing their spiritual selves to be the first choice. First there is the young man who is handpicked by the Dalai Lama for religious service, even though he earns his earthly needs with his day job in Phoenix, Arizona. The latter is a Native American who grew up on tribal land and is now an international micro-enterprise venture capitalist turning people’s lives from starvation to contributing to his tribe with a better herd of cattle.
More than once, Bronson is the spark that lights the flame and sends his subjects on new adventures simply by listening to them and asking them questions that provoke them to think in a new way. He is a journalist who gets involved enough to insert his own life to justify his actions and tell the ballet dancer, “I think I’ll find some themes in your crazy scrabble.”
His reflections, personal conclusions and themes are worth reading. The only mild criticism I can give is his reasoning for deliberately targeting his Gen X. He believes it’s too late for all the baby boomers or they’ve figured it out. He’s wrong on both counts, but I can’t blame him. It is always easier to look around and behind than forward. And few want the experience of his parents’ generation. I think he said that too.