Perreault Magazine - 77 -
SK: What prompted you to write your book "Renaissance Human"?
BC: In late 2009 a two-year health and personal crisis began -- surgery for cancer, life-threatening staph infections, the death of my mother after a long bout with Alzheimer’s, double hip replacement, stepping down from the CEO job of a visionary organization I helped to found, and the dissolution of my marriage. It was a sobering and sometimes frightening journey. But once my recovery was assured, a new spirit began to emerge in me to express my creative side again. I embraced singing and dancing with a renewed passion, I became an avid iPhoneographer using the power of social media to share my inspiration. I started consulting to new and existing businesses leveraging my 35+ years in management and executive roles. I determined to express myself as fully as possible. Gradually the comment started coming to me that I was a “renaissance man”. In all humility I knew that for the first time in my life, I was expressing myself fully with zeal, energy, passion and balance.
As I began telling my story to friends and in keynote talks, I saw that others of my generation facing harrowing life circumstances were benefiting from my journey. But so were millennials looking for role models of people who had uncovered and developed all sides of themselves.
As a civilization we are facing a frightening array of civilization-threatening problems. It’s easy to resign ourselves to the narrow focus of one’s nation, one’s religion, the pervasive invasiveness of technology, poor education, or an underprivileged upbringing, and continue on a path of mutual assured destruction. Or we could fully embrace a new dedication to beauty, truth and goodness which has brought unity and peace to the world for centuries. We now had the opportunity, like never before, to not only expand our creativity but also to share it instantaneously to solve the truly daunting crises of the 21st century. We could marry the breathtaking promise of technology with a sacred love of the arts.
The Renaissance saved civilization from the Dark Ages.
A new generation of Renaissance Humans could do the same
for us.