Do You Have a Calling* ?

Maybe you wonder if there is a specific place in the world for you, with your particular personality, skills, talents -- everything that makes you, you. Then again, in our ultra-cynical age, it's easy to dismiss such thoughts as idle fantasy... you may have friends or relatives who do just that. Here is a way to encourage this bit of hope that's trying to take hold in there.

Think about someone that you have benefited from personally because of their skills. This could be someone famous such as Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, Jonas Salk ... or it could be someone you knew personally, such as a childhood teacher. The important thing is that you benefited from them and things that they knew.

I was really fortunate in this regard. I had a sixth-grade teacher -- Mrs. Blackwell -- who took children, including children with ability, seriously. She had a real gift for encouraging kids who were naturally curious (and I think this includes damn near all kids) to go ahead and use their intelligence. She didn't exactly push us or prod us because I think that would have turned us off.

That's just one example. You can probably think of a number of examples from your own life.

Here's where it gets a bit like an old movie: remember It's a Wonderful Life, the old Jimmy Stewart movie where the hero gets to look at the world without himself in it? This is where you consider the world without some of your heroes, then consider whether you might be one of those heroes someday.

Think of one of the people we just discussed -- someone whose skills touched your life and made a difference to you. Then, go back and think through that same portion of your life, except without that person. Either that person didn't exist or that person existed but for one reason or another didn't have that career, didn't have those skills. Whatever you needed from that person you didn't get, you either did without or you got it from someone else.

The point here is that there would be a pretty big difference between the two pictures. So now we jump into the future. Somewhere in the world there will be someone who maybe hasn't even been born yet but who could benefit from your skills. Whatever it is that you're able to do, and obviously it's not easy, if it was a real easy, natural thing there probably wouldn't even be any reason for a site like this to exist... but it probably wasn't easy or natural or just like falling off a log for the people that you've benefited from either. So here are two pictures: one is this person in the future benefits from something you do with your life; the other is they don't, they do something else.

You are better off because someone in your life had the courage, good fortune, or maybe just persistence to become who they were. It might be really interesting to see what happens if you do the same.