My loved ones and I continue to revisit the idea of a calling when it comes to working life - because almost everyone you know will tell you that that's something that makes your days (thus your life) significant. At least one story goes: if you don't and can't love what you do at work - where we direct considerable energy - you haven't found your way and you're kinda lousy.
I wrote this several years ago in an attempt to crystallise my most important takeaway from James Hillman's "The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling."
If we have a daimon, a genius, an indwelling spirit that spurs some of us to great heights, what of those that seem to live normal, everyday lives? Can there be a call to mediocrity? Yes, says Hillman, there is a call – but not in the way that we think. We denigrate the mediocre but that is so when we generalize – for who can tell us the character of each person making up this mass of “average”, those who live without shining so brightly?
“So let’s clear away a typical mistake: identifying vocation only with a specific kind of job, rather than also with the performance in the job,” says Hillman (p.252)
