OUR CALLING IS ALREADY EXPRESSING
We may sometimes feel that our life would be meaningless. Our contribution at work does not seem to change the world ; the private and for-profit company to whom we rent our capacity to work is only interested in selling and maximizing its profit ; our relationships with some of our loved ones are disappointing and seem empty ; the world and ourselves run in autopilot as we all play the life we would like to have, while preventing us to open too widely our eyes to our difficulties and others’: sometimes we forget about them, something we laugh at them, sometimes they make us cry.
We aim at making meaning, at increasing the quality of life, righting a wrong or preventing the end of something good. And sometimes, on top of appearing gigantic, these projects feel entirely in front of us. We would not have started anything yet. We would have been waiting for so long. Our life would have been empty until now, and everything would be yet to complete.
I do not believe so. If we believe in the concept of calling and in the idea that we are here for a reason, we then have received it one way or another when we came here. And more importantly, we have been expressing it since a long time now, maybe without realizing it yet. We would not have been able to prevent us since the day we are born to let it speak. We are shining on the world since this very first day, in our own way.
The example of one of my friends who gave part of his life to a volunteer fire brigade comes to my mind. He also has been feeling that his current life would be meaningless: not helping anyone, with today an impact nowhere near the one he had on others compared to this beautiful moment of his life. I think such a feeling is reductive. This friend has a natural tendency to help, to be present for others to a point that is out of the ordinary. Today, every day, he helps others. He helped me and still does. He helped and helps his family, his colleagues, his loved ones doing little things where he always does this extra mile, this little addition we are not expecting him to do and he is not forced to do. But he always does, as if it was natural to him. I believe his calling is expressed here: to help others a little more than usual, with courage, strength, and respect. And I think it expresses every day, in all the dimensions of his life, today and since we was born – at least I have no doubt since I know him.
Let’s take a moment to observe our trajectory. Let’s project us without anxiety in the different environments we have developed, young, more experienced, with our friends, our family, our communities of colleagues… Let’s project us in these moments when the best of ourselves is alive. How these people surrounding me would describe me? For what would they thank me if I were to disappear tomorrow? Our calm, our capacity to listen and our smile, our strength, our energy and courage, our appreciation for effort and our uprightness, our casualness and our creativity, our empathy, our tendency to amuse and entertain, to reassure, to express compassion, to trust our intuition and the abundance of life…? All we discover here is, I believe, an expression of an energy beyond us that lives through us.
We are not only potentials yet to blossom. We are living expressions, today, every day, of a gift we received. Let’s do this important exercise, let’s connect the dots. It is structuring to realize how and how much we shine on people, to reassure us and give us some confidence, personal courage and strength to continue welcoming the expression of this calling, every single day of our life.