"DISCOVERING YOUR LIFEWORK: Ask Any Good Questions Today?"
Leonard Lang
Sunday, July 6th, 2003

What is it that you and you alone are called to do in this life? What is your lifework? Those aren’t questions most people ask each other or themselves very often. Yet they are among the most central questions of our lives--whoever you are, wherever you come from. In India, for example, people have traditionally used the term dharma to talk about one’s path in life. Dharma can be literally translated as “right action,” but it is often used to describe what one was put on earth to do.

In the West, we have used a different term-- calling. In the Bible, people are often called to do something. Abraham, Moses and in the New Testament Paul on the road to Damascus. Even in recent times we know that Mother Teresa felt called to start her life among the most disenfranchised.

But calling doesn’t only apply to those in religious orders. We each have a calling or lifework. As Mother Teresa said, “I am holy the way I am holy; you must be holy the way you must be holy.”

Of course, I can’t tell you how to do that. Neither could Mother Teresa because we must each find our own path, our own way to be holy, our own lifework. The term lifework may be unfamiliar, but I use it because calling and vocation often seem archaic or confined to clergy.

However I do like the distinction made between career and vocation I found in Fast Company magazine a few years ago. It stated, The word “…Vocation comes from the Latin “vocare” which means “to call.” It suggests that you are listening for something that calls out to you, something that comes to you and is particular to you. “Career” comes originally from the Latin for cart and later from the Middle French word for race track. In other words, you go round and around really fast for a long time—but you never get anywhere.”

So how do we get somewhere? How do we even know where to go? I once interviewed a doctor who told me of a photo of himself in first grade scrawling in a childish print on the blackboard, “ I want to be a dokter.” To this day he has no idea what put that notion in his head, but he always knew that’s what he wanted to do and is now doing it with great satisfaction, if not with improved penmanship. But most of us don’t have that certainty from an early age. And no one can teach it to you. What I can do is suggest an ally to help you discover your lifework and stay on track. An ally that will keep you creative, fresh, thoughtful, alert and often a bit humble. An ally that can stick with you for life. That ally is: questions.

Did you know that the average child asks 125 questions a day? If you’re a parent of a 4 or 5 year old you probably do know that. We adults ask only a paltry six. We may know more, but we may also be less willing to learn or see something new.

Fortunately, we can get back in the habit of asking questions. When Nobel Prize winning physicist, Isaac Isador Rabi was a child, his mother didn’t ask if he got the right answers at school or if he finished his homework. Every day, she asked him, “Did you ask any good questions today? It was in his habit of thinking as it can be in ours.

But we can’t just ask any old questions. As Rabi’s mother realized, her son had to ask good questions. How important is a good question? Albert Einstein was reportedly asked how would he approach a situation where he knew he’d be killed in an hour unless he could find a way out. He said he’d spend the first 55 minutes of the hour deciding the best question to ask. Then it would be easy in the remaining 5 minutes to get the right answer.

So what’s the right or best lifework question? Fortunately, there are many. Here’s one of my favorites. I learned it from a friend who acquired it while in Italy. I can’t pronounce it properly, but it goes something like, “Cosa fai di bello?” Translated literally, it means something like, what are you making or doing that’s beautiful? But what’s fascinating about this question, my friend said, is that it’s an Italian version of asking what do you do for a living.

How different a way to ask about your work life. (Whether Italians actually use this phrase in this way or not, it’s an exciting and fresh way for us to think about our lifework.). By contrast, “What do you do for a living?” is basically about survival, isn’t it? What do you do to earn a living, maybe implying earning your right to live, as if its not God-given to us all? In any case, our usual question is an economically based question rather than a spiritual or aesthetic one.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m actually in favor of things like money and survival, economic or otherwise. I believe money should always be in your lifework plan, not to mention in your wallet and bank account. But I have learned that one of the oddities of lifework is that if you start thinking about it by asking the economic survival question first, you may never get to the questions about beauty, or spirit, or joy. In fact, asking about survival first may have the opposite effect and may even be hazardous to your health.

Studies tell us that when we go to jobs we dislike, we respond very badly indeed. We get sick. And when we try to go to work on Monday morning an alarming number of us die. That’s the day with the most heart attacks, and the hour with the most heart attacks is Monday between 8 and 9 a.m. Not surprisingly then, numerous surveys show that half of all Americans are unhappy with their work and would change careers if they had a chance.

The lifework cure for all this is a plan based on good questions. In this morning’s first reading, poet Mary Oliver asked us what we are doing with our one wild and precious life? The question is profound. It reminds us that we have but one life, and that we are the ones who can decide what to do with it. It also indicates each life is a precious life and needs tending to but is also wild, full of unknowns and exciting possibilities. That’s the starting point for thinking about our answer.

Oliver’s own answer in this poem is to say on this day she’s outdoors experiencing the blessing of just being alive in the natural world. That’s a fabulous reminder that it isn’t all about work. But I think her question is a good one to also ask about our life in community as well. Are we treating our lifework as something wild and precious, something spiritual and meaningful, a blessing to ourselves and others?

Not that I originally asked myself what I was going to do with my one wild and precious life. Instead, I asked the economic question. What will people pay me to do? Actually it was a bit more complicated. I asked, what will someone pay me to do that won’t contradict my values, will let me be pretty independent, and will leave me time outside of work to do what I really love.

I proceeded to develop a work life that paid me adequately, didn’t contradict my values and left me time outside of work to do what I really loved. I had succeeded… but didn’t feel as if I had. I felt a spiritual hunger inside of me about my work life. It was as if I had a hole in my day’s activities, and that hole was called work. I was doing work that wasn’t my passion and that began to wear on me. But what felt more spiritually disheartening was that I knew I had been given talents and passions and experience and creative powers that were not being put to use.

I was discouraged until I realized if I could somehow make my unpassionate, halfhearted vision a reality, couldn’t I do the same with a more fully authentic and therefore motivating vision based on better questions about my passions and values and skills? And if I was wrong, at least I’d have a great time trying to make it come true.

In the remaining couple of minutes, I’d like to very briefly share with you just 4 more questions. These are the lifework questions I use with clients…the questions that form the basis of my Guide to Lifework book..the questions I’ll use in the lifework class coming up at St. Joan’s next month.

1. The first question is: Who are you? If you don’t know yourself, how can you know what you might do? More specifically, ask what are your values, passions, gifts and beliefs. Think clearly about this but check in with your heart, your gut and your spirit.
2. Second, given your passions, values, skills, what is your purpose or focus? That’s the guiding principle, the rudder to keep you on course.
3. Third, what does it look like when you’re engaged in your purpose? What are the details? In other words, are you working alone or in a big office with a team, in Minneapolis or Maui?

These 4 questions can do remarkable things. People begin to believe that who they are matters. They realize they can contribute to others more gladly and open-heartedly because it is based on who they are. They become energized and that energy is infectious. In one lifework class at St. Joan of Arc, the power of one person’s dreams almost took over the class. I couldn’t get people to stop talking about her plan for a retreat center, or even talk one at a time like good obedient adults are supposed to do. First her partner got excited, then a small group, then the whole class got involved offering suggestions and daydreaming aloud about what they’d do if they were at her retreat. They were ready to go there that night if only they could. But it wasn’t because we’d heard an exceptional idea. Rather we saw what was unique and exceptional about her which was shining through as she spoke about her passion.

So I invite you to look around you and think about everyone here and everyone in your life having a unique lifework, a purpose in this world, a way to be holy the way only they and you can be holy. And then think of how to support this. And as a start, I invite you to ask at least one other person today, what are you doing that’s beautiful?

Thank you.

© 2003 by Leonard Lang

Leonard would be happy to hear from you at llang@beardavenue.com (website www.beardavenue.com).