Vocations

Vocations, apparently, are not just jobs, trades, or careers. They're something akin to callings, occupational raison d'etres. Yesterday, my mom told me about a nurse practitioner friend who passes out at the sight of blood. "It just isn't her vocation," my mom explained.

I joked with my mother earlier this week that I could have been a surgeon. This, of course, isn't true for two significant reasons, (1) I hate biology and (2) I hate school. So surgery--and medicine overall--"just isn't my vocation." And if not that, then what?

Americans, you know, like to get to know people by asking them, "What do you do?" Other cultures start with questions like, "Where are you from?" or "Where do you live?" or "Tell me about your family" But Americans like to ask about vocation. Because being a CPA or a JD or a Historian or a Math Teacher matter, not only because of the prestige it may or may not carry, but because we believe it's a key to understanding a person's sense of self.

But like my mom's nurse practitioner friend, I wonder how many of us find our vocations. And how many, like those several hundred thousand people on hold every week filing their first unemployment claim, don't.