Pulled in Many Directions

When I was young, I wondered what I would be when I grew up.

I wanted to be basically everything. I wondered how people decided to choose a certain vocation. How did they end up becoming what they were?

I certainly knew I wanted to be a pilot, although I had bad eyesight, so I knew I also needed to hedge my bets for that one. I also wanted to be a writer and actor and computer programmer and quite possibly a spy or whatever it was that Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings did for a living.

To aid me in this quest, I carried a Kool-Aid man fanny pack filled with pocket knives, special rocks, a compass, binoculars, an inhaler for my asthma, flint and tinder, and a folding saw. My family can attest that I carried this everywhere.

It was important to be prepared! And little Stephen never knew when he might be called to step into his life calling, to become suddenly a writer, actor, to do something with computers, fly a plane, and become a man of the wilderness. I believed that these were all important life callings and something about each of them spoke to me.

One Sunday in church, I learned how pastors became pastors. It went like this: At some point in your life, if it was fated for you to become a pastor, you "got the call." God sent you the message that said "You, sir, are to be a pastor someday."

Later that week, naturally, I was turning over these important matters and ruminating on them. I was looking out the window one windy Oklahoma fall and I remembered what the pastor had said.

What did it mean to get the call? I thought that maybe it was enough to simply have the doubt that you got the call. Maybe the mere possibility of the call meant I should be a pastor.

I went outside and told my mother, who was working in the garden.

Wisely she asked, "If that's what you want, then great. But do you actually want to?"

I watched some grackles for a few moments while I thought over her question.

I shook my head. “I don't think so. No, not really.”

Before that, I don't think it had occurred to me that I could have an opinion in the matter.

I went back inside.

It was interesting to consider choosing to be something. If I chose to be a pastor, then in a few years, I'd be one of those.

Well, I didn't want that. I also didn't realize that I was equating being interested in something or valuing it with being fated to do it. For whatever reason, I believed that because I was really interested in something, I was supposed to follow through with it completely.

The ancient Greeks had this beautiful idea about talents and natural inclinations. They called it "daemon" - like a guiding spirit that pulls you toward a path. Plato wrote about how each soul has its own daemon, this inner force that perhaps knows what you're meant to do. Maybe our various interests are like that - each one a different daemon trying to guide us somewhere important. Not necessarily toward a different vocation. In fact, the whole notion of a person's vocation is probably a very poor descriptor for the shape of their life's calling or who they truly are.

As a kid, I felt the tug of obligation towards my interests as if they were pulling me in different and competing directions, which was helpful, because it made the process uncomfortable, and we tend to become aware of things that make us uncomfortable. Otherwise, I think people slip into life directions without realizing they're making a choice at all.

Similarly, Jung had this fascinating idea that we're not really one person inside - we're more like a community of different characters or sub-personalities. He called them complexes, and they each have their own goals and desires. It's like having a whole cast of characters living within you: the dreamer who wants to write poetry, the builder who wants to make things with their hands, the explorer who wants to travel. None of them are necessarily the real you, and they don't usually agree with each other. Maybe that's why choosing just one path feels so impossible sometimes - we're asking one part of ourselves to silence all the others.

Is it better to die with your song inside you or spend your life playing someone else's tune?

Well, they both yield the same result. One entails the tyranny of one inner character to the detriment of the other sides of a person. The other entails not really putting any courage into honoring what you want above the need to feel safe, accepted, secure at a basic level.

We definitely put too much importance on a person's vocation. In previous generations there was less choice in the matter. Son of a cobbler, you're a cobbler. “Hello, Mr. Cobbler.” “Yes, it’s a fine morning, Mr. Blacksmith.” Sort of like arranged marriage but with vocations. You just made it work.

Having more choice is good, although it's crazy how everything gets tied to vocation. Even health insurance - which could just as easily get tied to your house payment or better yet, universally available to everyone. If a person chooses to honor a certain side of them, it means they don't qualify for care when they get sick. Life is weird.

This is the era where we've decided that it's more impressive to be a CEO than a yogi. Apparently next it will be influencers. After that, who can say? What world will the generation whose parents were influencers inherit?

As for me, what I know to be true is that my life continues to be better when I make the hard decisions that put first my sense for what is true.

Wait, you ask, how did truth come into this? Weren’t we just talking about picking a vocation?

I think truth is what unifies us and ultimately best steers the various characters and daemons. Truth is what makes choice more than a zero sum game.

For a time, it's right to go in this direction. After awhile, it's right to head in that direction. Not from a sense of compromise, but embarking on each change of direction with complete dedication. With the sense of wisdom that you need headlights at night to drive, and you can only see the path just ahead of you, even if you have the really annoyingly bright headlights other people seem to have on their cars. Even those will not illumine the entirety of the journey from state to state.

Once it becomes clear that truth points a certain direction, that’s that.

And then when that changes, you get a new that.

And then that’s your that.