Vocation

Sorry for any readers who might have been wishing for an off-day throwback race report. I suppose I should just state plainly that those will be coming less frequently. As far as competition goes: I've moved on.

Moved on to what, though? Today, prior to our main service at 10:45, we had a chance to listen to a woman who is currently in seminary talk about her calling. As is becoming increasingly typical in Protestant churches, this was not a 22-year-old who was pursuing the normal career path. This woman is 45. She's spent her whole life in ministry of some sort, but the call to the priesthood is one she has only recently embraced (though she claims she's been hearing it for quite some time).

Anyway, it was wonderful to hear her story, but also quite interesting to go through a rather simple exercise she had for all of us attending. First, we listed the various vocations that we, as laity, had embraced at one time or another in our lives. Easy enough. Next, she asked us to reflect on them and pick the one that we felt was our most important calling. For me, this was quite easy. I wouldn't be trashing my life to get a PhD if teaching wasn't what was pulling me.

Then she asked us to think about how we knew this was our calling. Well, that's still a pretty easy one for me. I've always wanted to teach and, when I have done it, my experiences have done nothing but reinforce that. So far, so good, but then she asked the question so few of us bother to ponder: why?

Ummm.

This is a hard one for me. Not because I can't come up with the answer. Rather because I know the answer and don't particularly like it.

There are, of course, many altruistic motivations to teach. It's very easy to pretend that you're taking the high road: leaving a more lucrative career as a practitioner, wanting to share your knowledge rather than just take it with you to retirement on the beach, wanting to give back to a field that has given you so much, blah, blah, blah. While none of those are false, none of them are the motivation, either.

I want to teach because I like doing it. I became a bike racer because I liked doing that. I became a consultant because I liked doing that (and, after a few rather lean years, liked the paycheck quite a lot, too). I run because I like to run. I go to church because I like to go to church. I cook because I like to cook.

I'm actually pretty hard pressed to find anything I do that I don't like doing. Sure, there are certain aspects of my activities that suck (I hate filling out my timesheet, and I don't mean I dislike it - I hate it). But, taken as a whole, I like doing the things I do.

Now, there's obviously nothing wrong with liking what you do. But, if the reason you do all these things is simply because you like them, at some point you have to ask if you're just being selfish. Well, I don't really need to ask; I know I'm basically selfish. I always have been and that's not likely to change at this point in life.

I'm not really sure what to do with all that but, this being Lent and all, now is a good time to at least think about it.