Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

by Parker J. Palmer

Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.

The deepest vocational question is not "What ought I to do with my life?" It is the more elemental and demanding "Who am I? What is my nature?"

True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as "the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need"3

Here, I think, is another clue to finding true self and vocation: we must withdraw the negative projections we make on people and situations-projections that serve mainly to mask our fears about ourselves-and acknowledge and embrace our own liabilities and limits.