Business Journal Op-Ed

Vocation

Less than half of all Americans say they are satisfied with their jobs, according to a survey of 5,000 U.S. households commissioned in 2003 by The Conference Board, a non-profit organization that creates and disseminates information about management and the marketplace.  The survey indicated the decline in job satisfaction is found among workers of all ages, across all income brackets and regions.  Anecdotally, half of my friends say they dislike their jobs, too.

Perhaps one reason for the dissatisfaction is that many workers have committed their time and energy to landing and maintaining a job as opposed to seeking their vocation in life.  The word vocation comes from the Latin vocare, meaning “to call.”  Determining your vocation, or calling, is a process in which one wrestles with the question, “For what purpose was I born?”  Many people are fortunate to be on career tracks that intersect with their vocation, and some find their calling outside of their regular jobs.  Still others struggle mightily to reconcile what they do for a paycheck with what they believe they are called to do.

Frederick Buechner, the teacher, theologian and author, defines vocation as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  Vocation is the thing that will make your heart sing while at the same time meeting a need for someone else.  If Buechner is right, then your vocation is not something you have for your own benefit.  Your vocation is a gift given to and through you to the whole community. 

I teach, and while that is not part of my responsibility as president of Guilford College, I do not receive extra compensation and would pay for the privilege if needed (not that my bosses – our trustees – need to know).  It’s because that’s where my greatest pleasure lies and where I think I can make the greatest impact on the needs of students.  The payback is enormous in terms of watching young people mature and succeed.

Several years ago, Guilford launched an Initiative on Faith and Practice, supported by a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc.  Education in the Quaker tradition seeks to help students discover their vocation from “the inside out,” working to discover what they were each created to become.  Faculty members have the job of  teaching life skills that will enable students to wrestle creatively all their lives with the questions of “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?”  Teachers ask questions, teach bodies of knowledge and skills, and expose students to an array of ways that they might test out the callings they are beginning to hear.

Gordon T. Smith wrote in his book, Courage and Calling, “We long to find and do work that is meaningful, that makes a difference and needs to be done.  Further, we long to find a balance between work and leisure, between our responsibilities at work and in the home … We also long to make sense of the organizations in which we work – to know when to accept a position and when to resign … and we earnestly long to effectively manage the transitions of life as we move through each chapter of our adult careers.  For each of these points of longing, the way forward is through conscious reflection on what it means to have a vocation, reflection based on a good theology of work, vocation and self.”

Smith, the former academic dean of Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, says there are two simple rules to follow as you seek your calling.  The first rule is to know yourself – your gifts and abilities, the deepest desires of your heart, your unique realization of the world’s needs and your unique personality and temperament.  The second rule is to be true to yourself.  Remember Polonius’ advice to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet:  “This above all: to thine own self be true.”  My own rule that I have shared with colleagues and students over the years is the alarm clock test.  If on most mornings when your alarm clock wakes you, you rise not looking forward to going to work, re-examine your job commitment.  Life is too short to be spending 40 hours or more per week, and thousands of hours per year, doing something you hate.

Wherever you are on your career journey, and especially if you have a lingering dissatisfaction with your job, consider a vocational check-up – an examination of work, vocation and self.  It might be just the prescription for satisfaction from the inside out.

This opinion-editorial was originally published in the Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area in July 2004.