Someone I knew from work once narrated that his brother saw a ball of fire hovering over him one night. His bother took it as a sign that God wanted him to be a priest. He joined the priesthood and has been a priest for years.
Not everyone gets a ball of fire. Most of us have had to struggle with the question of what our calling is without ever seeing one. A figurative ball of fire, perhaps, but never one we could actually see.
I pass by a university near my house everyday and I see students hanging out in the restaurants and shops surrounding it. I wonder who among them have figured out what they want to do with the rest of their lives. I guess a lot of them have not even asked that question and are just coasting along the way I did when I was their age.
In high school, I did not know what course I wanted to take. I just picked Economics because it was a subject I found interesting. Little did I know that my college courses had very little in common with my high school lessons. I wanted to change majors (Creative Writing or Comparative Literature seemed more interesting then) in my sophomore year. The forms I had to fill up and the lining up I had to do to transfer colleges stopped me from doing so. It did not help that the guidance counselor told me that there was no need for me to shift courses since I was not failing anyway. Fortunately, my course also allowed me to get 14 free electives (the equivalent of taking three semesters of anything I wanted, provided the course number was above "100" for ten of them). I took all the Creative Writing and Comparative Literature courses I liked.
After college, I enrolled in law school because I did find the job opportunities that I had interesting. I briefly toyed with the idea of a graduate degree in Creative Writing but chickened out because I was an insecure 20-year-old. I was so afraid of not being good enough to be called a "writer", even with a graduate degree in my resumé. At that time, I thought that people who called themselves "writers" were poseurs. I felt that "writer" was a title that one earned and others bestowed. What would I be if no one thought I was good enough to be called a "writer"? At least, I figured, I'd be a lawyer if I finished law school and passed the bar.
The entry into midlife has me and my friends wondering if we are now doing what we ought to be doing and if this is as good as it gets. We're not as insecure and angst-ridden as we used to be (I hope). We've all concluded that we have to be passionate about what we have chosen to do if we are to be great at it.
Juliet, the lady who makes my curtains and sofa slip covers, worked as staff for the legal department of a huge bank for over 20 years. She said that she always had an interest in furniture and interior design and kept reading books and magazines on these subjects. She availed of the bank's early retirement program and set up a home-based curtain-making business using her retirement benefits. While she says that she misses getting the regular income of a bank employee (including the hefty bonuses), she believes that her old job could never give her the satisfaction she feels from doing something she loves and being able to provide employment to several workers.
Ritchie, an artist whose works I admire, was a business major in college. He never took a job remotely related to his course. Instead, he wrote and painted. His parents dissuaded him from pursuing art because of the common belief that one cannot eat art. Their disapproval was not enough to dissuade him. They are now among his fans.
I don't think I can handle seeing an actual ball of fire above my head. It is enough that I encountered passionate people who are great at what they do. I wish I met them when I was younger. I've realized, though, that I was not lacking in role models as a lot of my teachers were passionate about what they were doing and were great at their jobs. I guess some lessons can only be learned when we're ready to learn them.
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Email: lkemalilong@yahoo.com