Vocational Training

A vocation in the classical sense is more than simply a career or a job. It was an occupation that a person adopted, not for money, but because they seemed to be called to it by a higher being. The term was often applied to those who entered the priesthood. It now seems to be used as an euphemism for blue collar jobs that only require manual skill but little formal education.

Irrespective of the modern usage, vocations still exist. The difficult part is finding one. The rather wormy Chairman of Apple, Steve Jobs, said that you should find a job that you love. This is very clearly crap. There are some people who have such a horrid disposition that they cannot be happy no matter what they spend their time doing. There are others who have the constitution of a park avenue debutante and will go to pieces over the slightest frustration. On the other hand, there are also those who are irrepressibly happy with even the most mundane occupations.

Then there are the rest of us. The people who have varying interests and tolerances. We have to find a vocation that is not just what we "love", we also need to find something we are reasonably competent at. Lets face it, we all love to do things that starkly demonstrate our incompetence. For instance: Dancing and I do not get along. It always causes me a tremendous amount of embarrassment. (Some of you may have recently witnessed this and I sincerely apologize for any mental or emotional scarring it caused.)

So we need to find a vocation that we both love and possess an aptitude for. Rarely do we love what we are skilled at. And even more rarely are we adept at what we love. At this point, a person can go in one of two directions: compromise or sacrifice. You can compromise and do something that you don't love so much, but can achieve competence easily. Or, you can stubbornly hold onto your dream and work until you achieve competence at what you love. Make no mistake; this may require sacrifice of all else you hold dear.

So how do we go about finding our own way? I have no idea. While I have a personal disdain for Mr. Jobs, he does make a good point in the aforelinked speech: you don't really know the path to your calling in life until you've already taken it. What a terribly useless paradox to not know where you are going until you are already there?

Now for the moral of the story, this week someone asked me if I like what I do. Even after committing a great deal of time (3 years) and money (don't ask) toward qualifying for the job, I was surprised to say "I like what I do." Being a lawyer seems to combine my personality, my pass-times, and even my personality defects into a vocation where I not only possess reasonable skill, but that I also enjoy. I never really imagined myself liking what I do to earn a living. Although I still have my reservations, and don't really know what I will do for the remainder of my productive life, I enjoy my job.