Day 158 - Calling your Calling

 “Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.”   ~Vincent van Gogh 

I still don't know what my true calling is, rather, what it is called - but I'm calling it all the time, and it seems to be working in that I'm now satisfied with what I 'do', who I 'am' and how I 'live'. This satisfaction is not an end result, it's a continual process that keeps me aiming as the goal posts move with the rhythm of life. Still, I was not living a wholly gratifying life until recently. There was always something seemingly missing; the only thing missing was acceptance and acknowledgement. It takes time, I guess. Well, it did for me anyway.

Whatever my calling is, it contains writing and communicating ideas, expressing balance toward a life well-lived, with an appetite for growth and understanding as I try to help others feel a sense of support and connection to the strange thing we all experience as existence. 

Many people are searching for their true calling - some have found it, artists, healers, musicians... even so, it may not be the best idea to pigeonhole one's calling into a 'profession' or 'career' because it limits the ways in which a person can reach their full potential. You are not what you do. Doing is something that your Being carries out - the actions and creations we perform are expressions of who we are.

What is reaching full potential anyway? Is it an award that others give you for your hard work? Is it accolades? Money in the bank? I don't really know, actually, because it's probably different for everyone - these things are external goals that help us feel good about what we're doing, aiding us in our journeys, and signs that we're going in the right direction. What I do know is that living every day with the satisfaction of who, what, and where you are now is an indication of reaching full potential. Reaching implies a movement, not an objective or destination.

Lately, I've been thinking about sleep as a hint of the cycle of life/death. We do stuff during the day, awake, and then we have to sleep, be unconscious for a period of time, so we can do more stuff the next day. All animals need sleep - and now that I think about it, plants have a dormancy during winter too. The seasons are also an indication of a larger cycle in play. Maybe life/physical existence is a greater system of 'awareness' that leads us toward death, a greater system of 'rest', in a macrocosmic rhythm that we mirror here in our sleep/wake cycle.

I'm digressing a bit LOL. The point there is that our true callings are as varied as we are, but they are not unattainable, we live them whether we know it or not, asleep or awake. If you do not think you know what your true calling is it's because you are burying it under thoughts and ideas about it, instead of simply discovering it just by being who you are.

Think about the things you do during the day when you have free time. When you are left to your own volition, you'll find a common thread... for me, it is communicating, whether that's attached to music or a pen/paper, a computer or a fun, enlightening conversation. When you find that common thread, you will then be able to apply it to your job, or whatever else you are doing, and in that way reaching your full potential. You become your calling in every waking moment, and maybe in sound sleep too!

 


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