“Shit, he's right,” I said to myself.
When I didn't get the position, I believed I needed to re-orientate myself to the nature of the work I was aiming for. What I didn't realize at the time is I should also be re-orientating myself for work that fit my nature.
This isn't always easy to do. We live in a culture that extols doing over being, analysis over intuition, and success over depth. Going against the grain is never easy.
Moreover, we are raised with this belief that we can be anything we want. Even today, I have a friend who goes around claiming any shortcoming seen about oneself is just a ‘limiting belief’. And yet, we all have limits: and it's in those limits where we can learn to hone in our essence to go deeper into our callings.
In his lovely book, Parker Palmer says, “The God I know does not ask us to conform to some abstract norm for the ideal self. God asks us only to honor our created nature, which means our limits as well as potentials.”
Those limits always have a way of exposing themselves, mostly in times when uninvited. As Palmer notes, “how the road closed sign turned me toward toward terrain I needed to travel, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to discern meaning I needed to know. On the surface, it seemed that life was lessening, but silently and lavishly the seeds of a new life were always being sown.”
I've felt the same in many other failings I've had to contend with around vocation. I recall being laid off from my first post-college job at an engineering firm, and falling into a fit of anger and depression for several months. Looking back at the event, I could almost see no other way that would have benefited my transformation. At the time, I was full of hubris and took the work for granted. I needed a swift kick, because those taps on the back were not sufficing.
Over analyzing our parachute idioms may help rationally guide us, but in my experience will add little more. Instead, embracing the mystery as to what is the-best-version-of-ourselves fully, instead of fitting things into puzzles, will allow of true vocation to unfold organically while transforming us in the process.
Unlike a childhood friend I had who knew he wanted to be an architect at age 5 and is still working as one at age 50, the rest of us need to experiment a tad more. If we could see that “our lives are experiments with truth... and in an experiment negative results are at least as important as successes” (Palmer).
And I would add, success is never as good of a teacher as is failure. My failures are still thankfully teaching me.
* * *
I want to add I also just finished a great audio book by Matthew Kelly. I recently came across a list of books that transformed his life, and decided to go through a few of the ones I haven't read (including Parker Palmer's book). It's quite a compelling list so I thought I'd share:
1. Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer.
2. Back To Virtue by Peter Kreeft.
3. Three Philosophies Of Life by Peter Kreeft.
4. As a Man Thinketh by James Allen.
5. He Leadeth Me by Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J.
6. Conversation With Christ by Peter Thomas Rohrbach.
7. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis.
8. Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl.
9. The Return Of The Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen.
10. Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre De Caussade.