Towards Making Sense of Passion & Purpose in Career
As I begin to write, I feel a sense of wonder at the unimaginably amazing presence of all life, our bodies and minds and our aware consciousness. It brings me to the moment that concludes a Mary Oliver poem: "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
"To me, Oliver’s essential question calls us to wake up from everyday consciousness, and live lives connected to the natural world that are also purposeful and somehow generative for humanity and the planet. Arriving at the “plan for your one life,” and living it to the fullest is really the paramount occupation of human beings. Some would call that our inner sense of purpose or mission as we journey from life to death.
How might your inner purpose lead to what you outwardly choose to do to earn a living? Here it can get confusing, as our 21st century culture encourages us to pursue work with passion, do what you love. You know, find out what you most enjoy doing and see if you can make money at it.
Seemingly well-meaning, this advice has a hidden downfall: do what you love can make us overly self-focused and concerned with self reward. Those of us in the first-world who are privileged to even have the luxury of choosing a career for personal reward may have a special moral obligation: can we care about improving the world, finding what we can do by our presence and our actions to make this world a better place? Maybe it is more salient to consider what you care about.
How the passion test played out for me.
To show how this “passion test” might play out, some years ago I took time between jobs to explore areas I was passionate about but had never really acted on to determine if one or more might be viable as careers: working out-of-doors, engaging with the natural environment; carpentry and remodeling; stock market investing; spirituality and ministry, and landscape and wildlife photography. It’s tough to weigh or prioritize passions per se, so I looked into all five.
As I met with individuals working in each of those fields, I shared my enthusiasm and relative experience, and received affirmation that I could be a good candidate going forward. In most cases, additional training would be required for entry into the field, ranging from passing financial exams like the Series 7 to obtaining a graduate theology degree. Those pre-reqs all seemed do-able (I had passion for the field after all!) but as I went further down each path in every case I found an apparent roadblock:• For financial advising, while I enjoyed some surprising success as an individual investor, I got too attached to various stocks and did not have the emotional detachment necessary for trading (not to mention I found most of the Series 7 exam study questions boring).• The theology schools most in line with my values and beliefs happened to be in other cities (a move?), then any church would assign me to where I was needed (another move), so I wasn’t sure if my “calling” was strong enough to disrupt my family’s attachment to Portland.• The message I was getting from environmental nonprofits was that I would need to first volunteer and then hopefully be hired when there was an opening, a low-income path when we were raising a young family.
As you can see, I’m a good case study for the approach that landing a great job involves trying lots of things! Arriving at a best-fit career is not really just a matter of identifying your passion and then connecting the dots—it’s more like a multi-faceted adventure. Passions are at best a starting point in career search, not an end pursuit per se. And, despite the much-touted ideal, you do not need to be passionate about, or even love your work.
What you love to do can be expressed as an avocation, somewhere else in your life other than your job. As such, I am energized by advancing the caliber of my amateur travel photography, volunteering to abate invasive species at my neighborhood natural area and hiking/skiing every chance I get, taking classes in topics like Design Your Own Theology, and building community with my neighborhood, men’s group, and fellow basketball players.
Reality-check your passions.
If passions are to have any career relevance, they need to be reality-checked with competency—what do you enjoy doing and are really good at? Some years ago I realized I was naturally adept at connecting individuals with resources or people who could help them advance their lives, and that gave me a special joy. There followed a process to craft a mission statement: I bring inspiration and connections to help others reach their highest potential.
When let go by my last employer, rather than return to conventional employment I wondered if I could make it on my own as a counselor. A group course in starting your own business provided grounding, strategy and support. What ultimately made it successful, however, turned out to be taking the risk to live my mission, effectively providing inspiration and connections to individuals in career transition to help them find and land new opportunities.
These days I get to experience un-pressured time with clients (autonomy which I never felt as an employee) and enjoy coaching, encouraging and helping make connections for them. For me, this is not so much work with passion, as expressing a larger passion for life.