Chapter 2: Now I Become Myself
“Today I understand vocation quite differently – not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess.”
“Thomas Merton calls it true self. Quakers call it the inner light, or “that of God” in every person. The humanist tradition calls it identity and integrity. No matter what you call it, it is a pearl of great price.”
“In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability.”
“The deepest vocational question is not “What ought I to do with my life?” It is a more elemental and demanding, “Who am I? What is my nature?””
Vocation at its deepest level is doing something you can’t not do, you may not be able to explain it to others, maybe you don’t understand it completely, but it fulfills you.
A lesson for finding true self and vocation is taking away our projections in other people so we can find, acknowledge, and embrace our own liabilities and limits.
“Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.”
“Rosa Parks decision: They decide no longer to act on the outside in a way that contradicts some truth about themselves that they hold deeply on the inside.” “I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be.”
“They have come to understand that no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment.”