I don’t mean, is it a good calling? (That, after all, makes it sound like a puppy.) I mean, what are the qualities you would use to describe your calling?

After you’ve come at it from lots of different angles, you’ve probably got a sense of what it is or what it looks like, even if you don’t know quite how it’s going to manifest in the world.

Is it creative? Inspiring? Powerful? Quiet? Meditative? Revolutionary? Is it experimental? Purposeful? Curious?

How would you describe it?

This is not a flippant question

The qualities of your calling are as important as the “content” of your calling. In fact, they’re more important.

Because we’ve been so trained to think in terms of “careers” and “jobs” and “tracks” and etc., when we start working on finding our calling, we tend to get stuck in descriptions that at least tangentially fit careers and jobs and tracks.

We want to teach, or we want to research, or we want to invent, or we want to write, or we want to dance, or we want to make beautiful chairs. These are outcomes. These are manifestations.

Your calling, on the other hand, is bigger than outcome and bigger than manifestation. Your calling is about what special quality, what special message you bring to the world.

I think Martha Graham said it best:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

That vitality she points to, that life force — that’s your calling. And it is unique. It cannot and will not be duplicated or repeated by anyone else, no matter how many other people have the same job title or work in the same field or career.

Words will not encompass it

Your true calling is a lot like the impetus a writer has for a novel. The best novels can’t exactly be reduced to a “message,” but at the same time, you get something out of them — you’re changed. There’s something there.

Our callings, too, can’t be reduced to a message, but we can point to them the same way we can describe a really good novel.

Even though we can’t express our callings fully in words, pointing to it with qualities is useful because that pointing gives us a direction. It gives us something to measure our manifestations against. It gives us something to return to regardless of what happens in our jobs and our careers.

Calling can be — okay, usually is — a fraught subject for unhappy academics. You see, so many of us thought we had already identified and started to live our calling. And then our calling betrayed us.

Or so we think

Our calling has never betrayed us. Our calling is, in its purest form, the shape our soul wants to take in the world, the work we’re meant to do, the gift we bring to the brokenness of the universe.

That doesn’t mean that in academia we necessarily found the only or even best expression of it.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — callings do not map neatly onto jobs, even when they seem like maybe they have the same shape. Callings are much bigger than any job or even any career.

And that’s a really, really good thing.

A small story

I’m going to use myself as an example here, although I’ve seen this play out with dozens of clients.

I walked through the big oak doors of academia because I loved to read, and I loved writing, and I loved the idea of teaching. (There have been worse reasons to go to graduate school, but oh lordy, there have also been much, much better ones.) I never lost my love of reading or my love of writing or my love of the idea of teaching. But I never did find my love of actually teaching.

What I did find was almost more interesting. Teaching groups is not my deal, as a general rule. It alternately bores and stresses me. One-on-one teaching, on the other hand, always made me happy. I’m also not interested in writing per se — what fascinates me is helping people learn to connect with and trust themselves.

I never would have learned those things if I hadn’t been in academia. And that insight has led to any number of jobs in which I got to work one-on-one with people to help them get out of their own damn way, whether as a supervisor, an editor, or a coach.

Same calling. Different expressions — including ones it never would have occurred to me would be expressions of my calling.

All of which is to say

If you’re struggling with academia, and especially if you’ve left, there’s going to be grief. There just is. It’s totally normal and appropriate to be sad and angry and despairing and furious and bored and dismissive and insert-your-favorite-emotion-here.

But that struggle — and that grief — don’t mean that your calling is moot. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to live your calling. It only means you might not live out your calling in the way you expected to.

It still sucks — but not as much.

Your passion still matters

When you can, when it doesn’t feel quite so pointy and craptastic, if you’re still feeling called to your calling, you’ve got the perfect experience to learn something important from.

What about academia did, in fact, express your calling? What activities, what experiences, what tasks, what roles? What about academia didn’t actually express your calling?

You can do this for every job you’ve ever held, whether it was paid or not. Expand it to every notable experience, good or bad. That club you were part of once, when you learned how much you love leading discussion. The mountain bike ride on which you really, really got why people become avid athletes. That night at the improv when you stood up in front of a crowd of semi-hostile people and realized that however much you like the idea of being on stage, being on stage in reality makes you want to throw up.

Everything is a clue. Everything is a breadcrumb. Everything will lead you to your calling, if you let it. Even your struggle with academia.

If defining your passion and your values is creating stuck or resistance, try getting to your calling by starting from a vision of your ideal life.

Here’s how it works

Put yourself someplace you can concentrate without interruption. Take a couple of deep breaths to center yourself. Then begin imagining your ideal day — not a vacation day, but your ideal everyday day.

Where are you when you wake up? What time of day is it? Who’s with you? What does your sleeping space look like? What are you wearing?

What happens next? Do you eat breakfast? If so, what is it? Where do you eat it? Who, if anyone, do you eat it with?

What does “getting ready for the day” entail? What are you wearing when you’re ready for the day?

Where do you go next? Who’s around? How far is it? What does this space look like? What do you do there?

Where do you eat lunch? What does that consist of? Who, if anyone, is with you?

What happens after lunch? Where are you? What are you doing?

What does the time between lunch and dinner consist of?

What do you eat for dinner? Where do you eat dinner? Who’s with you? When does it happen?

What happens after dinner? Where are you? What are you doing?

When do you go to bed? What does “getting ready for bed” consist of? Who’s with you?

Why this is useful

It’s easy to get caught up in “what’s possible.” By focusing on our ideal (every) day, we can free ourselves from our limited ideas of what’s possible and start honing in on the lifestyle and activities that speak to our deep selves.

Once you’ve got a sense of your ideal day, you can work backwards — what does this tell you about your passion and your values? If you already had a sense of your passion and your values, what insight does your ideal day provide about how you want to be living? What does this imply about what happens next?

Using your passion, your values, and your ideal day to create a map of your dreams creates the ground for thinking about how to turn those dreams into a lived reality — and that’s what we’ll be talking about next week.