A Summary of "The Summoned Self"

This article explains the two ways of thinking about life according to David Brooks. One way is the well-planned way and the other is the summoned life. The well-planned life was described by Clayton Christensen in an issue of Harvard Business Review. David Brooks makes it a point that Christensen's well-planned view of life is more of individual agency and tasks. Brooks also believes that when Christensen is done explaining the well-planned life, "life comes to appear as a well-designed project, carefully conceived in the beginning, reviewed and adjusted along the way and brought toward a well-rounded fruition." (The Summoned Self). David Brooks writes that the second way of thinking about your life, the summoned life, starts from an entirely different perspective. People who think in this mode are skeptical hat business models can be applied to other realms of life. The Summoned Life emphasizes the context. David Brooks concludes his writing with an opinion of his own based on the way the two versions of life are explained in this article. "The first version is more American. The second version is more common elsewhere. But they are both probably useful for a person trying to live a well-considered life." (The Summoned Life).