What is Vocation?

What gives our lives purpose?

Our Intuitive Perspective

We’ve taken vocation to be a fundamental word for our project. It’s a term that we believe captures a profound sense of purpose and completeness in life. It gestures towards the ultimate goal that we’re working for: A life that is truly happy, fulfilled, and rich in direction. Someone who truly has a vocation has no doubt achieved what we’re hoping to find with this project.

Now, vocation does a great job of gesturing towards this goal. But gesturing isn’t enough. We need to really investigate what we mean when we talk about vocation and ask what it even means to pursue such a thing. In the end, what can we hope to achieve by seeking a vocation?

As usual, let’s start simply by asking what our perspective on vocation is. When we think of vocation, what comes to mind? What image do we have when we start considering what a vocation is?

Vocation as Work

Our most basic association with vocation is simply what you do for work. Something like vocational school might come to mind. Vocation at its simplest is about what we do, and for most people, the thing you’ll do the most is work.

Of course, vocation is also purposeful. When we talk about someone “having a vocation” for something, we’re saying that it seems like something natural for them. In a sense, it’s as though they’re made for that thing. We might say that someone who’s naturally good with children might be said to have a vocation for teaching. This vocation is their natural path in life.

It’s clear that this view of work is many people’s first idea of vocation. Work is where most people derive their purpose from. It’s what justifies us, in a certain sense: We become worthwhile to the world because of the work we do.

The goal for everyone here should be to follow a calling in their own life. Everyone wants to feel that they have something that they are led to by their very essence—we want work to be something that shows what we are meant to be.

A Reductive Position?

Now, a simple problem arises when we look at vocation in this light: If we see vocation as being our purpose in some way, then a reduction of vocation to work means a reduction of all purpose to work. Do we want to say that a person’s purpose is just what they do for their 9-5?

This idea certainly seems reductive and even dangerous. Abandoning all purpose that falls outside the scope of work seems simply absurd. Is this really the best path to a purposeful life?

Perhaps the simplest problem with this is that for most people, it’s clear that their work is not a vocation in the strictest sense. No doubt there are many very successful and talented salesmen or analysts who don’t feel as though they were born for that work. Most likely, the majority of people don’t feel they’re “living out their vocation” in this first sense.

What should we say to these people? Should we say that they’re correct and their work actually does lack meaning? Should we just preclude the possibility of anyone living out a fulfilled life if their work isn’t vocational in this sense?

Clearly not. Many people still lead purposeful lives even with this work that lacks that sense of calling. Work that doesn’t have this sense of natural calling or vocation is still perfectly dignified.

An Emphasis on Calling

This idea of a calling seems to be the real essence of vocation. People want to feel as though they are uniquely needed for something. That seems to be the most essential part of vocation. There is nothing more purposeful than the sense that there is something you are needed for, something only you are capable of.

Let’s think about this for a moment. When we say that we want this sense of calling and this sense of being uniquely needed, what are we really saying? Is this reducible to saying that we just want something to do that nobody else can do?

This seems like an incredibly narrow view of vocation. How few people are really capable of something that nobody else is? How many people can make themselves entirely unique and individual simply by what they do?

It seems like looking for a unique calling in what we do is something of a dead end, then. But this calling still seems essential. This seems like the essence of purpose. Where, then, can we find a calling that’s about more than what we do?

If what we do isn’t enough, then perhaps another perspective entirely is needed. Perhaps we need to look away from what we do and towards what we are.

From Doing to Being

If we want to escape this narrow view of vocation built around work and action, perhaps the best place to go is to look at vocation in a more holistic sense as a calling that encompasses your entire life. It seems clear that purpose isn’t simply reducible to work—so perhaps that means that vocation isn’t either.

In this sense, vocation isn’t just about what you do or what you are capable of. Here, a calling is less so towards doing any particular thing and more so towards becoming a particular person. The essence of this sort of vocation is about becoming what you’re meant to be instead of doing what you’re meant to do.

A vocation, then, cannot simply be about the work you do. It has to be about the people who surround you, the curiosities that demand your attention, the everyday things that bring you joy, and everything else that makes you who you are.

Work’s Role in Purpose

Naturally, work will also fit into this. Work is part of who we are and part of what we do. That’s an unavoidable fact—if we had no concept of work whatsoever, we would be profoundly different beings.

However, work in this context clearly has a quite different role. It no longer needs to be the sole source of purpose in your life. Instead, it has a particular role that it fulfills. When we tried to find all of our purpose in work, we were looking for something that may well have been unachievable or nearly so. But now, we don’t ask work to be the source of all purpose. We ask work to be a part of a purposeful life: To provide, to teach us, and to help us find a place in the world. This is a role that work of all kinds can fit with ease.

This, then, should be our vision of vocation: Not a narrow slice of our life but the fullness of everything we are. When we try to explain our vocation, we shouldn’t simply point to one part of our life as what we’re meant for. True vocation should point to every part of life and say, “This is what I am made for.”