Vocation in Our Time

One of my best friends is my non-biological little sister, who I met when she was a senior and I taught at a high school in California last year. Now she's a freshman in college, but we keep in close touch. One of the great privileges of being her friend is that she shares her intellectual curiosities with others, seeking open dialogue and debate as she learns.

Recently, she sent me a short story that her philosophy professor had her class read and react to. She asked if I'd read it and tell her what I thought. The story presented a descriptive, complicated scenario in which the reader has to decide how to respond to the apparent evil in this fictional small town. I did a scan/skim of the story and tried to extract the basic points to spell out my response, which I wrote out in a short paragraph.

She replied, saying my comments were interesting, and the included her submission to the professor. Her thoughts echoed some of mine but went leaps and bounds beyond, showing a carefulness of thought, an inner deliberation. She had read the same passage I read but engaged it with greater depth. She took her instinctive first thoughts and dug deeper to see both sides and measure out a nuanced, astute response.

Aside from being impressed with the wisdom and sharpness of a college freshman, I kind of longed for a former time when it was my job to do that. College afforded us such a wonderful opportunity to be unapologetically curious and to engage with that inquisitiveness on a daily basis for course credit. Some days were better than others in terms of work ethic and motivation, but I'm deeply grateful for the time I had as an undergrad to delve into such stimulating questions.

Because of my studies at Notre Dame, because of the friends I made and the circles I ran in, I became interested in so many things - theology and spirituality, political science, especially presidential politics and leadership, history, and music, to name a few. Some people get intensely interested in a few things, but I am the type to be really interested in a bunch of things. Ultimately, I had to settle on a career, and I'm a few years into trying my hand at Catholic campus ministry and education.

I think the challenge for our generation, or at least for people who cast a wider net, is that we do have to pick something. At the end of the day, I can't be a political scientist, a historian, a musician, and a campus minister - at least not all at once. For my career, for my 9-5, if I want stability and the chance to really grow in specific ways and gifts, I needed to pick something and go for it.

For people with more intense and narrow interests, is it easier? If you're a numbers guy and you go for broke with actuarial science or engineering, does that satisfy a bigger slice of your curiosity pie? I'm not sure.

I do know that alongside a full-time job and the hobbies that come with it (for me, campus ministry and theological/spiritual reading), there isn't a ton of mental energy or space-time for those secondary curiosities unless I'm really anal and surgical with my time. They still happen, and they still stimulate critical thought in exciting ways. However, I read my little sister's words and delight in a different phase of life when one could really fixate on an abstract philosophical question and spend time walking those thoughts back to applied reality. A doctoral degree isn't in the cards for me, so I'll just wistfully delight in nostalgia.

I think for our generation - for whom it's rarer to see people specialize into very specific careers and sustain those careers for decades on end - it will be harder. Our wide-reaching curiosities and wonderments sprung forth from more open-ended formation and education, which is a great gift.

Now as we grow, and as we try to embrace the chance to use and grow our gifts making a difference for people and their needs, we should rejoice in the medium we've found to try living our vocations. And while we do it, and maybe struggle with the ongoing investigations, I think of the advice I got from mentors last year as I started to teach, and the verb in this sentence can be adjusted according to one's vocation: "Don't just teach what you know; teach who you are."