It has been a long time since I last penned my thoughts down, and the reason is that for the past two years I had not set aside time for contemplation. On hindsight it is convenient to say that it was because I had not had the time-- but that is not true. I did not set aside time because I was convinced then that I was doing what I was put here to do. There was no dissonance that I had to work through, that I needed to get rid of through writing. There was a sense of correctness, and fit, that justified me mortgaging my life for professional pursuits. If my life had been a wall and I had taken a step back to look at the mural built then, I would have nodded my head in contentment.
However, things have since changed. The wall standing before me leaves me now with incredulity, although this is not to say that I regret my decisions. To be clear this also does not mean that I will now jump on a plane, and "eat, pray, love" my way into some sort of thunderous gestures. No, the point here is to acknowledge that I-- against all hope-- am not able to turn my job into my vocation. And the two need not be one and the same anyways. I used to think that eventually there would emerge slivers of deep connections between me and the work. However, the lapse of 4,000 (billable) hours in the past two years has proved otherwise.
A vocation is something that speaks to the soul, and it chooses us when we are ready to listen. We cannot (or at least I cannot) will ourselves into having a vocation, though this does not mean that it does not require commitment. It was a tall order to expect that my vocation should also provide me financial independence. We all need a job, but we do not need a vocation. If we are lucky, we may chance upon it once or twice in our lives.
Notwithstanding, a life devoid of vocation can still be a well-spent life. What we then turn to is our curiosities-- the gentle creatures whose voices are often too faint to hear because we are so addicted to our busyness, or at least I was. I am now a man of means (thanks to my job), but I too now wish to be a man of agency. What I need to remind myself is one, to keep nursing these curiosities, and not turn them into an infatuation (in the hope that they would eventually morph into a vocation), and two, to therefore keep in check my tendencies for the superlatives and excess. Unlike a vocation, curiosities are innocuous because the stakes there are so low. A curiosity-driven life can make a well-spent life, and perhaps in pursuing them one has found one's vocation in turning one's life into a tapestry of tiny curiosities.
