Job, Career, Vocation
Today I would like to write an article for LinkedIn, and for my LinkedIn. A reflection of mine at a personal crossroads of sorts. I offer this contemplation because I feel that it would be beneficial to my readers in their own professional and life journey. Accordingly, let me examine the subjects of job, career, and vocation—from the point of view of my reality as father, husband, son, and brother:
A job is one’s most basic responsibility, and a job is the simplest of social exchanges. A defined set of tasks for defined compensation. As a father I pursue a job to earn a living for my child. As a husband I do so to partner with my wife’s selfsame end. As a son I pursue a job to demonstrate to my parents that they have raised a functional adult. And as a brother I work a job in like demonstration to my siblings that I am a capable person.
A career is one step above a job from the point of view of self-fulfillment. For in a career, one expects that one’s job also expresses one’s unique talents, interests, and abilities. Here, one pursues an ideally lifelong, practical mission of contribution to society, while enjoying the recompense of livelihood. As a father, I might pursue a career to more qualitatively provide for my child. As a husband, I might adopt a career to serve as an equal partner to my wife’s selfsame effort. As a son, I might choose a career in demonstration to my parents that they have not only raised a capable, but a professionally fulfilled son. And as a brother, I might exemplify a career in demonstration to my siblings that professional fulfillment is possible in life.
However, while both a job and a career are fundamentally healthy for the individual and his or her society, a vocation is the most beneficial—and outstanding. For a vocation not only seeks to marry one’s unique talents and abilities to one’s responsibility for livelihood, but it also seeks to unite one’s very soul-mission to one’s practical way of life. In such a way that while livelihood is supported, it is ultimately secondary! Personally, I can conceive of vocation on this level because I have been pursuing my vocation all my life, so here is where my article becomes very personal—
While one can have “a job” or “a career,” one can only have a singular vocation. This is the case because one’s soul is unique and its mission in life is accordingly unique. And finding this mission, this active and practical purpose is the greatest aim of life and the most responsible thing one can do for others!
Ever since I was a boy, I felt that my life had a mission. In my inner experience, I deeply perceived that this present existence is not my proper home, so that I must be born to accomplish some singular work for others. For others and not for myself, again, because I cannot find fulfillment in the forms of this existence. Hence my life has been a perpetual quest for this purpose, my vocation.
Wherefore, I have changed as many jobs as my soul might change clothing, moving from one to the other as my spirit restlessly seeks self-realization. To such a degree that choosing a specific career has always been impracticable to me! As a body needs clothing to survive, I need my various jobs for base livelihood, but I have come upon a self-reflective crossroad at present. Quite frankly, I feel that I have never truly attained my vocation in full. I have not to date arrived at a way of life where my deepest, spiritual sense of mission practically supports my livelihood. So that in my soul I nakedly ask, “was I born in vain?”
I don’t suppose as a father my life is in vain, because when I look into the eyes of my baby girl, I ultimately suspect otherwise. When I fight back my adult impatience with her demands for child’s play because I contemplate that the love and patience that I show her now, make an eternal impact on her soul (and God knows what lesser experiences her soul might have endured in other lifetimes), I know I am touching on my vocation. Nor do I suppose I am a husband in vain. For when I endeavor to live up to my side of our partnership to the best of my ability (even if not as practically strongly as a career man), eschewing all unfairness or abusiveness, I know I am doing what I should. I cannot be a son in vain, either. For when I turned away from my private life as a then single man, relocating to the city of my aging parents to ultimately serve as their guide and guardian, I am assured within that I am on the right path. And finally, when I see how my self-sacrificial service to my elderly parents, how my attentiveness to my child, and how my mildness to my wife is setting an example to my siblings, I do also accept that my brotherhood is not in vain.
Ok then, so my vocation is not altogether unrealized. But the only thing that seems to be missing is a way to both be spiritual, and to earn a livelihood--all wrapped up in one. Within a life project that also maximizes my passions, gifts, and talents. Or can a proper vocation include the definition of my humble life as a man seeking to live sincerely and selflessly, extraordinarily because primarily for others, and performing various jobs in sustaining his basic, social responsibility? ?
Of course, I haven’t mentioned www.newamericanspring.org, my ideal sense of mission in life. The project which can utilize my highest aptitudes as visionary, spiritual leader and CEO. Except that I just did...
New American Spring!
Maybe Someday It Will All Come Together (wink)...