A couple months ago I spent some time with a group of students in the
process of discussing various careers.
Part of what was at stake was helping them think about this before they
graduate. Too often a college student
thinks that a particular major leads to a special job. Sometimes this is true. But more often than not, there is no direct
corollary between our major in college and the careers we wind up pursuing.
I am certainly not against a student choosing a major in
college. As a matter of fact, most
colleges require that major to graduate.
What I do want to question is the assumption that certain majors lead to
certain careers. It is more involved
than that. And perhaps there are times
when luck has a role to play. What did
happen in the discussion provoked me to start thinking about the whole
phenomenon.
I thought about my own life.
It is obvious to anyone who looks at me that I am at the end of my
career! My next career move likely is
called retirement! When I look at my
working life, it is obvious that much of my career has been teaching. That fits who I am and it uses the interests
and skills that I possess. It has been a
satisfying career. I have found it to be
refreshing to get up in the morning and go to work. In that I know that I have been quite
fortunate. I have had some jobs through
college and earlier in life that I did not like. Some jobs make you want to pull up the covers
and duck!
And maybe that is already a difference. There are jobs and, then, there are
careers. I have been fortunate to have a
career. It has not been a
straight line. There have been some
curves and some jig jags along the way.
I have had different jobs, but almost every one had a major teaching
component. So teaching was my career.
But I understand that not everyone is lucky enough to have a
career. And certainly not everyone can
have a job or career that he or she likes and is eager every day to go to
work. That made me think about another
perspective, namely, to ponder vocation.
I don’t know how the experts would differentiate career and
vocation. For some folks, they probably
are the same thing. I can make a
difference between vocation and career.
Career has a long-term effect in my understanding. My career as a teacher has stretched over
decades now. In fact, I think people
today tend less to have a career and more to have multiple jobs. The rapid change of our world today makes longer-term
employment less likely.
One way to define a vocation is a more specific kind of
career. For example, my career might be
teaching, but vocationally it would be teaching college students. A vocation is more restrictive. A second way to define vocation is to see it
in a religious sense. It is very typical
to talk about someone who becomes a priest or a monk as having a
“vocation.” They have been specially
selected and trained for that particular job or way of living. In fact, in Catholic traditions a monk is
often referred to simply as “religious.”
That’s his or her vocation.
This leads to the third term, calling. Again, the idea of calling and of vocation is
close. Certainly some people may see
them as the same thing. While close,
they are different in my mind. I
understand the idea of calling in a spiritual sense. In fact, I think every human being needs to
have a sense of his or her unique calling in order to live life to the
fullest. In my mind calling does not
have much or anything to do with jobs and employment.
Calling has to do with how we find meaning and purpose in
our lives. It can be related to career
and vocation, but there is not a necessary connection. I could hate my job, have little sense of a
vocation and be quite clear about my calling in life and be happy to live out
that calling.
In the classical Christian sense of calling, it is linked to
the idea of discipleship. In the New
Testament Jesus routinely approached someone, like Peter, and said simply,
“Follow me.” “Follow me” becomes a call
on their lives. They are called into
relationship---a relationship with Jesus and with God and, ultimately, with all
the others who are called into this same kind of relationship.
This is a much wider calling than the vocation of the priest
or monk. This calling happens for all
people in all walks of life---all careers and vocations. It is a calling into a way of life and a way
of acting. It is a call to participate
in bringing the kingdom of peace and joy into a troubled world. It is a life-long calling.
I may retire from my career.
I may no longer have a vocation.
But I have my calling until I am dead---and maybe, even after that. My career has been good. My vocation has been satisfying. But my call is life giving and deeply
meaningful. It has given me a deep and
transcendent purpose to life. May we all
know our call and live it out to its fullest.
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