Craving Conversation: Arthur Brooks
I’ve been aware of Arthur Brooks as a “think tank” guy, and more recently as someone who writes for The Atlantic magazine. Recently, my husband came across an interview he did on the 10% Happier podcast for his new book From Strength to Strength, and we listened to it while on a road trip to Tucson. Then, we each got the book. Wasteful, perhaps, but he likes hard copy, and he likes to write all over his hard copy, and he likes to read his hard copy at the cigar bar, so that by the time he finishes, let’s just say, well-loved and stinky. I suppose I could have read it first, but neither of us wanted to wait.
Which is a long way of saying we were pretty intrigued. He and I have talked about a lot of these concepts before, but there was some great new language about the second stage of life – not a retirement planning book really, more about finding meaning as you go through life’s inevitable transitions, many of which are driven by simple biology.
Each of us really was compelled to keep talking about it. For my part, I reached out to three women that I thought might indulge me in some conversation. It’s hard to do any kind of book club thing when you are busy, and we are iin four different places in the country and three time zones, but we’re doing it – April 1 is our date. I didn’t even want them to have to bow out if there wasn’t time to read the book, so I created a little cheat sheet, and maybe I’ll do a video.
I especially want to talk to these women, because as much as I really liked the book, he does seem to me to have a man’s perspective, and a lot of the research cited only used men as subjects. That’s what my husband called a “Brene Brown problem”. She outed herself shortly after publishing a lot of her work on shame, and said she hadn’t adequately incorporated men’s point of view or experiences, something she has since worked hard to correct.
I’m so grateful to these women, that they would be open to my out-of-the-blue phone call asking them to indulge my craving for conversation.
Perhaps more later ….