What Is a Calling?

…

I wouldn’t say that ‘doing what we’re meant to do’ is an easy thing.

I also wouldn’t say that it’s easy to determine every fork in the road.

Granted, this comes from someone that didn’t grow up listening to instinct, but avoiding it.

So, the internal argument about my decisions is often interrupted by, not what’s best for me, but what’s best for others.

There is a conditioned impulsive response that gives me relief by dismissing myself and filling other’s needs before my own.

And it’s been a fight for my life ever since, it seems.

…

Do we have a calling?

Is it individual?

Do we find it by adventure and fall in line to it, or is it created by some sort of history, an adolescent awe, or incessant irritation like the itch underneath our skin we just can’t satisfy?

When we struggle with it, fail at it, are humbled by it…does it mean it’s not right for us?

Or does it mean we didn’t give it the effort it required?

Or that we treated it too superficially?

That we were too impatient to “exist in it”?

That we only did it for what it would bring to us, instead of for what it demanded of us?

…

Out of an infinite amount of things to do in such an age of the world, how could we possibly choose which is the right one?

Have we decided on something in particular because it’s easy? Or that it seems easy?

Have we decided because we secretly think, hidden even from ourselves, that it will make us recognizable?

Attractive….irresistible?

…

And is there a chance that it leaves us?

Will calling change? Will it be something else entirely?

Will it threaten to shake our identity? Change our character? Make us less of what we thought we were?

…

If it were superficial, can we notice the fact?

Will we cling to it desperately because we have nothing else, or do so because we have convinced ourselves that this is the only way?

And if we never commit, if we always question it’s validity, if we never really believe fully that it is what we were meant to do…will it cause us to perform it poorly?

Cause us to never grow the fruit in which we could enjoy? Cause us to resent it and never truly give ourselves to it?

…

The questions can be endless if we never step out into the world and find out for ourselves.

Here’s the thing for all of us who didn’t get to start out life with an “urge” or an instinct.

Here’s to the people who were threatened to strive for a commoner’s dream for “safety” or were made to look as fools for being artists or innovators…

The thing that calls you, the thing that makes you depressed, doubtful, lost, disturbed, and bitter…or that thing that calls to you, tempts you, that you feel is transcendent to another world, and you feel shame for it…

It will never leave you.

…

This is the soul which has fallen sick.

It is the light that is cloaked by the darkness of your fear and your passivity.

Your soul is turned sour by the decision you’ve made to cage it. To keep it held back for the sake of being made fun of, of being judged for it or mocked for it. Because you’re afraid that someone will steal it from you or destroy it.

So, rather than giving it air, giving it a chance to build a strength and armor for you, you allow it to eat you alive.

You take what is meant to be beautiful and shiny and bold and let it become a monster that eats your heart and poisons your mind against the world that you so deeply, secretly want to be a part of.

…

A calling, if we could only separate it from success, is something that isn’t just what a community needs.

It’s what the individual needs.

It is the very thing that makes you the best human possible. It is what takes you from being just a human into an ever expanding force that saturates the world around you with inspiration, love, and admiration.

We get what we truly need, not by the tricks we use to get ahead, but by the actions we take to be the most honest, unfiltered, sacred version of ourselves.

…

Calling is that thing that turns us into the devil himself when we don’t do it, and the savior of the world when we do.

It is the divine we are looking for.

It’s joy acted upon. It’s confidence proven. It’s growth made easy. It’s love magnetized.

It’s tension and hate and doubt let go from our sweaty grip. It’s mediocrity left behind. It’s the fusion of humanity and heaven, lived.

It is, transcendence.

…

Time and time again, I’ve come across this idea that what we are meant to do, is so often foundationalized by an obsession or wonder we had when we were children.

I’ve searched my own childhood.

And among it, before I had teachers tell me what man has done, I was in wonder with the creatures and symbols that man had created in a way for him to understand the world.

My love for dinosaurs and dragons, demons and angels, hellhounds and gryphons, saber-tooth tigers and mastodons; anything that man either imagined or man found that came before us and made crude depictions of…it all fascinated me.

Before I could tell what actually lived and what was made by the human mind, it was these things that led me art and the fascination of story.

Creatures, monsters, gods and devils, hellish underworlds and heavenly utopias…

It led me to wanting to know what made ancient civilizations create gods they couldn’t see, how a god could create the universe, how men came to be supernatural warriors and athletes and innovators.

What pulled man? What made him risk and sacrifice and die for understanding? What made him reach beyond his assumed knowledge and that of humanity which led to inventions and epic stories and up into the stars?

All of this.

It’s why I find myself where I’m at.

And somehow, it eases the chaos that I feel. The fascination and study(which I’m still dissolving the shame around) is what not only helps me understand the world, but helps me fill myself up with something beyond the emptiness I’ve felt for years of my life.

…

Calling isn’t something we should set aside or dismiss as immature.

It is the center of the human soul. It is the beating heart of humanities origins that took us beyond being creatures.

And unfortunately, because we’ve forgotten about mythology, the hero’s journey, and the feeling — not the chase — of awe and joy, we find ourselves so easily lost in a world that defines life by what we have, far more often than how we feel.

Really, so many of us have forgotten how to feel. How to trust our body without the brain, and finding what eases it’s pain and chaos.

So, we spend years, decades, trying to work our way to awe and joy. We try to do it through psychological discipline and habit alone.

We’ve lost sync; separated our minds from our bodies.

To me, it is the sync of the mind and body, in parallel, that creates the soul. Or at least, is the link to it.

…

But what happens when we learn the psychology of transcendence?

When we find a flow state?

When we find our our brains and bodies in sync with our creations and obsessions?

Is that not what we all seek?

…

If we can submit to it…

I think we find what makes any of this worth it.

We find that life is what we repeatedly do, not where we end up.

We see that patience and practice every day is what transcends. It’s what the religious would call Heaven or Valhalla. It’s what hedonists and the secular spiritualists might call our connection to our nature.

…

I’ve said this before…

Heaven or peace is not what waits for us in biological transition.

It is here and now.

We choose to seek and exist in it with our daily choices.

Why? How is that even true?

Because every day, so many live in hell, and don’t acknowledge it as such.

And if there’s a “Hell” on Earth, there must be a “Heaven”.

Truth and Love, Reader.

If you like my writing and the things I question, you might(I mean…probably) also like my newsletter. If not, you can still get all my stories here on Medium!

Substack is where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get not just my medium stories, but chat with me directly, have access to all of my content in one place, and have access to The Art of Questioning audio. Only at https://zackaryhenson.substack.com

There are so many great stories on Medium! If you want to have access to some of the best writing by thousands of creators, start your membership with the link below, which will also support my writing.

Remember…question everything! https://zackaryhenson.medium.com/subscribe