Passion and vocation

By Lou Carlozo

As a writing teacher at Loyola University Chicago, the challenge of passing my best on to students has changed my life. True to the cliché, my kids teach me; they remind me what matters. And here is what matters most: Tap your passion.

“Tap your passion” is the guiding principle of my life; the reason I find myself “tap dancing to work,” to quote Bill Gates, instead of dreading a Monday morning. “Tap your passion” explains why I abandoned the “wage slave” mentality in my mid-20s and, instead of climbing corporate ladders, grew my hair and played in a New Jersey bar band. The enterprise failed miserably, but I would not trade those years for anything, because the “different drummer” I followed kept time with the beating of my heart.

Forget about Rick Warren and his rigid “Purpose-Driven Life.”

Take a lesson from deadline writers, who often must accept an assignment before having every detail worked out. If journalists can train themselves to take a leap of faith every time they are dispatched into the field, so can we all.

Our society has done everything possible to leave behind any complexity that the word “passion” demands. We speak of it in lingerie ads, adrenaline-junkie excursions and bad song lyrics by modern rock bands. But we avoid admitting that passion requires anything of us. The truth is that if you do something you love, you must suffer through trials, heartbreak, betrayal, disillusionment and more.

But when I find myself in the thick of doing what I’m best equipped to do, I consider myself the luckiest journalism teacher around. As the years go by, I’ve learned to abandon my own will and ask God what is demanded of me in any particular moment. I have taken the dung-stench compost of my defeats, dejections and disappointments and plowed it back into my life—letting God turn the mess into fruit on the vine, something true and beautiful.

To find your passion, or re-find it, pray. Keep praying until you see daylight. You may only get enough radiance to see that very next small step. But multiply those steps by a million—each one punctuated by a yes, each one stamping out the word “impossible”—and you will find yourself embarking upon a long, rewarding journey.

Lou Carlozo writes for the Chicago Tribune.

Comments

[Tom]

Following one's passion, one's calling, often involves a fairly high cost...didn't Bonhoeffer say that when Jesus calls us to follow him, he calls us to our deaths?

But it does provide a deep satisfaction, one that may not be apparent to others. I've done my best to figure out what my calling is, and I've had defeats and dead ends. But slowly I've come to find the right course, and some of those mistakes have proven to be the bricks to build this new edifice.