Mysteries of Multi-Potentiality

by Dan Masterton

My wife, Katherine, is not my soulmate. Well, actually she is. Umm, sort of.

Uh, let me explain.

When I was in college, I attended a summer conference for Catholic young adults. The goal of the week was to help all of us – from college-aged up into early 30s, those discerning religious life and those with little or no idea of any career – work our way to a clearer understanding of God’s invitation for our lives.

One of the panels featured folks from different states of life – single, religious, married. And, surprise surprise, it was the words of the married person that stuck with me. His reply to one question tore apart the notion of “soulmates.” His goal wasn’t to invalidate it but provide it a fuller context.

He explained that he didn’t accept the idea of fate setting two people on a course that would converge at one magic moment. To him, it didn’t make sense that two people have to be perfectly aware and ready for that fleeting moment or else miss each other. It wasn’t as if some special train pulled into a station for one brief stop and left forever, whether you had boarded it or not.

All aboard the Soulmate Express?

He offered a revised definition: your soulmate, if you’re being invited to married life, is the right person at the right time. I thought that was astute. Not only did it reframe the discernment of marriage into healthier, more real terms, but it also acknowledged that there are perhaps different people to whom each of us can get married, and that compatibility is just one factor among others, including timing.

As someone who dated a few different girls in college and found a lot of error in my trials, it helped chill me out. Connecting with someone romantically only to fail quickly and spectacularly in those relationships was hard, but this mindset subsequently helped me date more on its own merits than on the potential of some as yet unknown future.

Allow to weave, also, one more parallel thread.

At my first job, now two-plus years into the relationship that would become my marriage, this mindset took on another layer. My boss was exceptionally proactive about feedback, holding mid-year and year-end job review meetings with everyone. He offered me great advice mid-year that significantly impacted and improved my work – as a campus minister who was reluctantly teaching, albeit just a half-load, he challenged me to stop compartmentalizing and bring my campus ministry mindset into the classroom. This pastoral-academic combo made me a better teacher.

Then, when it came time for the year-end meeting, it was a different story.

There was a greater than 50-50 chance that I was going to leave this job, moving away to join my then-girlfriend in the same place after two years of long-distance dating. We both had been accepted to Masters programs in Chicago, hers the last step before beginning a career in nursing and mine the chance to study more theology on scholarship. To hedge our bets, and because my situation was attractive, she submitted a resume and cover letter to my school, and we considered deferring a year. So my conversation with him about my work was essentially about both of us.

His candor and wisdom stick with me indelibly. With his trademark reading glasses resting low on his nose, he brandished the file folders with her materials and mine on his desk and gave them another perfunctory skim. He was smiling and nodding and remarked, “Both of you are blessed with the curse of multi-potentiality. You both could be really good at a lot of things. You just have to choose one.”

If you knew him a little, you knew this sort of honesty was his way of affirming people. And he added, now addressing me, “I like you. And I’d like you to stay. But I have to be able to take you or leave you.” Delicious Ignatian indifference, and offered in a way that invited me to adopt the same mindset.

I liked my work. I loved my students. I was drawn to the good problems the school faced as it grew.

I also missed my girlfriend. I had a free Masters in hand. I had a way to move to my favorite city, with her, and try to figure out our next steps.

It was discernment between two goods. And his words helped illuminate that when we identify our gifts and passions, and seek to meet needs, there are a lot of possible paths. At some point, we have to choose one and walk it. Whether for a long or short time, whether for a great distance or a little ways, we start to walk in a direction.

With respect to marriage, Katherine was (and is) the right person at the right time. With respect to career and education, as well as relationship discernment, Chicago in 2013 was the right place. And while you choose one person to marry, you can sustain strong relationships with many; while you choose one set of passions to pursue professionally, you can still maintain hobbies and interests. There’s a tension in the multi-potentiality, yet there’s also a peace in choosing one’s response and accelerating down that path.

Our response to God may involve different actions at different times. Our state of life is a greater, overarching piece within which our particular vocations and vocational expressions find breath.

God’s invitation is ongoing, and our understanding and response must be, too.