Finding Passion and Purpose... at Every Stage of Life

I am reading - with great interest - Joan Chittister's book, Following the Path: The Search for a Life of Passion, Purpose, and Joy. Finding my career purpose has been a lifelong quest. I don't know why. Perhaps because I viewed my "calling" as a perfect job that I would someday (hopefully) find.

I've done a lot of different things, mainly in offices or schools. Once, for five months, I lived on a kibbutz in Israel, experiencing different kinds of manual labor. Every job started out interesting enough - but eventually left me feeling that my calling was elsewhere.

This phase of life, Joan Chittister calls the initial, exploratory stage when we try different jobs, usually settling on one. A lot of the time, "we simply stumble through, making up life as we go. Or we fall into them rather than really choose them.

"But those choices are... opportunities, fancies, lessons, experiences - all of which will hold me in good stead someday, but they are not necessarily real preferences."

Preferences often come, in mid-life (or mid-career), when a general dissatisfaction occurs. At  this point we have to decide whether to make a change - or keep doing what we have begun: "There is so much at stake now. So much life behind us has been invested in what we now find to be lifeless. And yet there is so much life left to live."

Terry and I both reached this point in our careers. At this stage, Terry went back to school, finishing a masters degree part time. I took several correspondence courses in writing. Surprisingly neither of us left our jobs, but we enjoyed them more, investing what we had learned into what we were doing.

A third stage of work occurs when family responsibilities ease and free time allows us to revisit our passions, volunteering or working part time, doing things we love - where there is a real need.

I am enjoying this stage of life! I keep busy traveling, reading, writing (especially blogging) and doing creative things like gardening, knitting, quilting, painting and pottery. I am also responsible for looking after my mother's affairs.

I have finally realized that my calling wasn't one single "perfect" job - but living a multi-faceted life, raising a family, living in a community - all the while, trying to find time to fit in things I loved to do.