What do we mean by "calling"?

Welcome to the ArtsBound Newsletter. Every Tuesday, I typically share three thoughts or insights meant to help you flourish in your life and career. I’m doing something a bit different this week. I had three points to share with you today, but as I got writing, it felt like one of them deserved to have this newsletter all to itself. It is this:

What do we mean when we use the phrase “my calling”?

The ArtsBound website has a lot of references to “your calling”, but to-date, I haven’t done much to explain just what I mean when I use those words. I’d like to spend just a brief moment on what is and is not insinuated in using this turn of phrase.

The term calling refers back to another word that seems to have lost a sense of common understanding: vocation.

Vocation is a term that originated in the Christian church (from the Latin vocare, “to call”) to refer to work - professional, civic, domestic, and spiritual - to which a person is Divinely called. Inherent in this understanding is the idea that all humans are born with innate strengths that make them well-suited for certain careers and ways of life.

In the early 1900s, the meaning of vocation expanded to include an individual’s acquisition of skills in pursuit of a career they would enjoy. This is the origin of the vocational-technical school.

As a young person in high school, “vo-tech” was my first introduction to the word vocation. And as someone who was interested in the liberal arts - a course of study that seemed to be diametrically opposed to that of vo-tech - I never thought of myself as having a vocation.

In determining your vocation - in the context of both the Christian and the modern sense of the term - you would be encouraged to examine your own unique combination of strengths, skills, and preferences. It’s a process that requires considerable self-reflection as well as some intuition.

This brings us to the understanding with which I use the phrase “your calling”, which is this: 

You are gifted with the unique ability to bring into the world that which only you can bring.

There is a core essence to who you are - what Jungian psychology refers to as the Self (with a capital S; or the “Higher Self”, as differentiated from the ego) - that exists in a field of infinite possibilities and is made manifest, moment-to-moment, in person you are and the person you are becoming.

Your calling is the “tug” you feel from your Higher Self as it pulls you in a certain direction. 

It does NOT mean there is one job (and only one!) you were born to do.

So, when it comes to occupation - the actual job or work with which you occupy your time - your true calling could lead you in a number of different directions, and probably will over the course of your lifetime. Using myself as an example, my core values of nurturing and mentoring others called me to be a teacher, then a parent, then a coach.

If you’ve ever struggled with feeling as though your life was stuck or off-course, reflecting on the common themes found in the various directions you’ve decided to travel can help in laying a finger on your calling. This can offer a great deal of inner peace and purpose, and it has been an honor for me to work with many students and young professionals as they hit that spark of insight.