A Life of Purpose and Meaning - Your Life's Work: Part 10 of 10
For this final segment of our 10-part journey discovering "Your Life's Work," I want to share this quote: "Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it." I find these words inspiring, as through my own experience and work I have come to believe strongly in this truth: that God has created us all with dreams, passions, skills, abilities, and different personalities so that we can live a life of purpose and meaning. God by His nature lives purposefully, meaningfully, in control; it stands to reason He has a plan for His creatures. And any God that cares enough to feed sparrows and knows when they fall, must care enough to have not just any old plan, but the best plan.
I am not so starry-eyed to think that this knowledge comes easy to us. It took me years to begin to understand what comprises my dreams, passions, skills, abilities, and personality. The process was not a lightbulb moment or a sit-com wrap up or a eureka newsletter article. And the process never stops. But I am committed to the journey, because I am convinced that unless we look inward we may never really be able to look outward selflessly.
Viktor E. Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and author of the book Man's Search For Meaning, penned that quote above. Those moving words came from a man who lost both parents to concentration camps, and himself endured years of physical and psychological torture by the Nazis. Their tactics included soul and body- pounding exercises such as spending back-breaking days digging deep trenches only to fill them again with dirt. A man determined to find meaning during those pain-wracked years as Frankl did is worth listening to.
Frankl wrote another truth I have come to see, that "ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for." I see the explosion of "Careers for Dummies" and other books and seminars addressing this core issue of finding our vision, our life purpose. I have noticed my home church recently placing emphasis on this topic of God's calling in our life. The need exists for young and old alike to find meaning in a world distracted by multimedia overload, overwhelmed by red tape paperwork, befuddled by the technological explosion we have experienced in recent decades, a world losing touch with foundational truths about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.
Being human, we all need help in this area, and I feel blessed to be one who can walk alongside people in their pursuit and discovery of their life's work. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this 10-part series on "Your Life's Work," and evidently you have enjoyed reading some of them. I have had many requests to continue writing on this topic. I will continue to post them on my website so that you can access them at no charge. Here are the career topics I discussed over my last 10 blogs:
Your Life's Work
Change: You or Your Thinking
Do You Have a Job, a Career, or a Vocation?
The Intentional Life
Taking On Risk
The Dreaded Resume
The Road Leading to Employment
Semper Fi - "Always Faithful" But Never Alone
The First Steps to Freedom from Fear: A Personal Account
A Life of Purpose and Meaning
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