Crafting Your Destiny: How Your Inner Spark Shapes Your Life’s Path

"Strong conviction of one's calling has always seemed to me to be the greatest element in a successful career." ~ Paul Tournier, Escape from Loneliness

Man with an Imperative

Life is the process of finding out who we really are. Simultaneously, life is the process of creating who we will be.

In the realm of career, Tournier observes here that a sense of calling assists us in remaining focused, rather than diverted and dilluted, thus enabling us to become more likely to achieve success.

How does this sense of calling emerge? Why do some have it and others do not? For some it may be innate. For others, it is a series of false starts, much like the explorations of a mouse in a maze. Why some give up seeking and others maintain a relentless pursuit is likewise a mystery.

I believe that the messages we tell ourselves have a strong influence on our life decisions. For this reason it makes a difference who we listen to, who we read, who we hang with. If we surround ourselves with people who suggest that change is futile, that striving to "make a mark" is useless and absurd, we will smother the spark inside us that is striving toward a better hope, a better life, and a better world for our children.

Today's message: Keep pressing on. Find your calling, and never give up.

The Value of a Sense of Calling

I have been on the road for a few days on a business related trip to Bowling Green, Kentucky. Being quite busy, and fairly immersed in what I was doing, I did not have any burning topics in my soul for yesterday or even this morning.

The weather was perfect the past two days. Mid-seventies, sunny skies. Kentucky is truly beautiful in the spring. The green grass and white fences make for some wonderful scenes and I think of the song "My Old Kentucky Home" because my father's roots are here in Kentucky.

This morning there's an overcast sky and a grey misty quality that brings to mind an early poem of mine titled Wisconsin Misty Morning, written during a week's vacation to a finger lake in central Wisconsin when I was wrestling with my life direction in 1983. The poem begins with something of a deep groan from my soul, a prayer to have the fog lifted from my life path. "Wisconsin misty morning come redeem me from this drifting, like the fog that here is lifting..."

And then it happened. I had a sense of calling to be a writer. Or rather, the fog lifted that week and I realized I had always been a writer, and that if I followed this particular star it would lead somewhere. I would fulfill my destiny, wherever and in whatever form that took.

To some extent this is what Joseph Campbell meant when he said "Follow your bliss." I had aways been a creative person, but had locked myself into believing this creative flow had to be expressed in the visual arts. But creativity is much bigger than that. It can be in architecture, engineering, applied sciences, philosophy, even economics as demonstrated in the Russell Crowe film A Beautiful Mind.

There is something quite powerful in knowing you're doing what you were destined to do or using the gifts that are innately, and even uniquely, yours. If you haven't got a passion worth hitching your life to, then maybe your first quest should be to get to know yourself. Who are you?

Take your time, though. You can't force it. This sense of calling has to come from within. And don't be afraid to dream.