What is vocation?
This question is so important because vocation does not just mean working for a religious order. Vocation is an all-encompassing word that asks a person to dig deep and ask the following questions:
What do you Love?
What does the world Need?
What are you Good at?
What you can get Paid for using your skills and passion?
What you want your Life to look like?[1]
In many ways, finding one’s vocation is finding one’s purpose in life and gaining clarity in what kind of work a person wants to do and how someone chooses to live his or her life. This search is an ongoing journey in life, but moments present themselves that allow us to reinvigorate, reimagine, or reaffirm our vocations. For the past eight years, I have worked as a teacher and case manager which have helped me to accompany people through these vocational moments. For me, there is nothing more joyful in my life than being with people as they have those “A-ha” moments. Part of that joy comes from re-living the freedom that I experienced in discovering my own vocation (and continuing to explore this!).
My own vocation is still growing and moving, and it has taken me time to realize that no one can find your vocation except for you. Your vocation is, as James Finley says, “an infinitely possibility [for] growth…Above all, we ourselves are gifts that we must first accept before we can become who we are.”[2] That being said, it takes letting go of the person that you think you NEED to be and simply be the person you ARE. It’s freedom.
This post is merely to say what I love about this work and to lay the groundwork for future exploration. This work is for EVERYONE – whether you are in high school or a few years from retirement.
Action item: After reading a blog like this, I think it’s helpful to have an action item. Take the time to answer the five questions above. Allow yourself to be in a space where you are able to relax and to be at peace. When you answer, don’t think about it. Rather, just write down what comes to mind first. Allow yourself to be open to the answers you find! Does this feel overwhelming? That’s ok! Give yourself the time and space to process what you think. Also, LIFE WORKING® wrote an article about asking these questions and finding the balance in Ikigai. You can find the article here: https://lifeworking.com/blog/whats-your-why
[1] Wanetick, Arlene. “What’s Your WHY?” Life Working, lifeworking.com/blog/whats-your-why.
[2] James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere: A Search for God through Awareness of the True Self (Ave Maria Press: 1978), 72, 73, 78.