Here I am, in the middle of my exam weeks, and I cannot concentrate. Despite
loving my study (Environmental Sciences), I feel restless. I feel that I should be living now, acting now, start
doing all the great things I wish for this world, right now.
But I feel so
small… How can I find a way to start doing what I love most: helping other
living beings (that is, ending poverty and injustice, create a sustainable and
fair economy, slow down climate change and more, all of those being
interconnected)? On a daily basis I see news passing by about great stuff many NGO’s
are doing around the world…but how can I participate, how can I help, and how
can I start learning and growing to my full potential? Somehow it is always
required that you have previous work experience in that area, that you know the
right person, that you live somewhere else. It is required that you have
great ideas, that you inspire others, that you are valuable for others, that you’re
older, younger, smarter, better, more interesting, more extroverted, more more more.
So, I feel small, lost, alone and insecure of how
to achieve what I consider my life's calling. I feel disconnected from others as not
many understand why my calling is so important to me. Even though one can
consider that I’m still in the process of learning all I need to know for a
future career, I cannot put the restlessness aside. I want to do something, anything,
now.
I do not want to see more years pass by, spending all my effort on studying,
but forgetting to live. And for me,
living includes following my calling. But I do need fuel for my dream, or one
day it will extinguish and leave me behind, with a bigger loss unimaginable.
“An unfulfilled vocation
drains the color from a person’s entire existence.”
“Don't ask yourself what the
world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go
do that. Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive.”
“Vocation is the spine of
life.”
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Maybe the reason that I
feel so small, is because I am too ambitious and self-demanding. I want to do
too much for the world, and thus overreach myself and then feel this mixture of
failure, loneliness and insecurity..Maybe I should remember a wise lesson
(learnt the hard way) that any mountain, no matter how high, difficult or
dangerous, is to be climbed step by step, and that any other option is
impossible.
