Finding a calling

For most of my adult life I struggled with the question of who I was and what my unique purpose was. I found myself internally resisting any pressure to become a clone of another person and yet I had no idea what my calling was. I thought there must be one thing I, and only I, could offer the world.

It's said that variety is the spice of life and it certainly is for me. I love it - from trying out new food to exploring new corners of the earth, to meeting people from a tribe I never encountered before, to taking up a new course, to reading a book about something wildly different. I have worked in so many fields that potential employers feel stumped about what I specialise in.

Being boxed is also something I find myself resisting. I don't like being defined as a particular personality type or cultural group or profession, as if it is static and I cannot be or do anything else. I am both reserved and sociable, a business-woman and a social worker, a socialist and a liberal, an orthodox and a radical, a free spirit and an ancient traditionalist. Flexibility and being able to stretch is very important to me.

So how does a person like me, with her hands in so many pies, find out what my calling is? Using the approach of self-questioning, I wondered if it was to be a mother. My inner voice replied, "You are a mother but that is not all you are." I wondered if my calling was to be a builder of opportunities for the vulnerable. Again, my inner voice replied that that was not all. I wondered if my calling was to be a traveller, but the same feeling came over me, that a traveller wasn't all I was. I wondered whether I was to be a healer, or a mentor, or a daughter of Rabia (the great sufi mystic), but in each case, I couldn't pin myself down to any one of them.

Then I realised that nothing in life is static. Everything changes over time. Why was I restricting myself to ONE calling? Why did I have to specialise in only one thing? Why couldn't I be a reflection of the incredible diversity that exists in the universe? Why did I have to choose one favourite colour or one favourite food or one favourite passion? Surely, parents should not be forced to choose a favourite child when each one stirs up in us another aspect of a deep and intense love that has no end. Perhaps the problem has never been my lack of a calling but the fact that I have been denying my own abundance.

Now I know that my callings consist of many different colours and threads, and as I weave all my callings together, they form a beautiful tapestry of my life. I realise now that it is THAT work of diversity, that beautiful mosaic, that rich heritage of wisdom and manifestations, it is THAT tapestry that makes me unique. It is my tapestry that I am called to live, and a single spirit in multiple manifestations is who I am.