WHAT'S YOUR VOCATION?
Human beings are the only creatures on earth who know they are going to die.
Probably. I’ve never been a dog so can’t say for sure, but as far as we know, humans are the only living beings who understand their own mortality.
This is not insignificant.
If one is aware of one’s own impending death, and roughly when (not the exact date, but we do know that we will definitely not live to be 164 years old) that sort of changes things doesn’t it?
Time becomes a very precious commodity, and especially if there is something that you want to do, really really want to do, well, you’ve got a fixed amount of time to get that accomplished in.
Less than 100 years most likely. Maybe 50 or so for the unlucky of us. Less for Kurt Cobain and James Dean.
So we are all going to die.
Probably.
You never know, the Singularity might hit when Kurzweil says it will in 2045 and we’ll enter the Final Epoch and live forever.
Probably not though.
So let’s agree that we’re all going to die in less than 100 years? That seems kind of short when it’s my life. I’d like to do something meaningful in that rather short time. Make some sort of contribution. Create a work of art that moves people. Something.
Somewhere along the way though, it seems that we start acting like dogs who do not realize that they are going to eventually die.
What this means practically is that two things become very important to most of us in our lives – and our lives are largely made up of our work:
1) MINIMUM ANNOYANCE
2) MAXIMUM SALARY
This is quite pragmatic. The least amount of annoyance and the most amount of money seems to make a pretty good equation to live by.
There’s a third thing here though, and unfortunately it often comes after minimum annoyance and maximum salary
MEANINGFULNESS
So it plays out like this. You turn 42 years old, and you take that 3-week vacation to the Greek islands where you enjoy local wine and fresh seafood and clear skies unpolluted by ambient city light, and one of those clear nights you are looking up at the sky seeing so many stars you’ve never seen before and this thought dawns on you…that your life is fucking meaningless.
From that very first payday way back when, you have been prioritizing minimum annoyance, maximum salary, and you forgot all about meaning.
Actually you didn’t forget. It’s somewhat more insidious than that.
You’ve been engaged in a massive act of self-betrayal for the last howevermanyyears by doing something that wasn’t too annoying, and paid quite well, but was not very meaningful to you.
Being the individuals that we are, we all react to this in different ways.
Some of us hunker down and get back to work. Some of us buy a sports car. Some of us have an affair. Some of us do a 10-day silent meditation retreat.
Some of us decide to search for meaning.
And that search often starts with the questions “why am I here?” or “what am I meant to do?”
Which frankly are not very easy questions to answer.
Here’s the good news. There’s this thing called vocation. Let’s make that a capital “v” like a German noun. It’s an important word, Vocation.
Vocation is the thing that you were meant to do. Your mind/body destiny, the reason why you are here, that thing that when you find it is going to absolutely erase that sense of meaninglessness and change it to pure meaningfulness. The ultimate meaningfulness, your Vocation.
And where should one start the search for one’s Vocation?
Hmmm, that’s where it gets a little bit tricky. A good place to start is to start thinking about it. There are hints. What did you love to do as a child that you don’t do now?
I suggest that we all know the answer already. It was always – and always will be – there.
Beethoven wrote his Symphony No. 9…while deaf. I’ve felt one’s calling when being handed a cup of coffee made with exquisite care by a skilled barista. As many flavors of Vocations as there are people.
There’s this thing called Vocation. It’s an important word.
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