Your calling is the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need.
-- Frederick Buechner
Continued from prior post on Ego:
If your ego is what assembles your personality and manages your identity, then your calling is invested in making sure it’s authentic—who you really are—not just a persona you show the world.
A calling expresses itself quietly, through the expression of subtle clues throughout your life. It is unconcerned with you attaining or accomplishing anything. Its primary function is to be a conduit for expressing your true self to the world. What you do with that expression is less important.
Calling needs silence to survive.
A calling, on the other hand, is discovered through observation and reflection, which is rarely found in a noisy environment. Listening to your life and discovering what it’s asking of you is your calling and it requires more silence than most of us are comfortable with.
Calling focuses on the process.
A calling reveals itself through self-discovery. Your calling comes from within and can only be revealed by paying attention to how your life is unfolding. Instead of managing the outcome, your calling can handle the stress of ambiguity. It knows that the tension is revealing something that you couldn’t otherwise learn.
A calling might begin with the expression of the self, but it moves toward the needs of others.
-- Shelley Provost
