What about the people who never found their calling?

Many complain of neglect who never tried to attract regard.

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Samuel George emailed, asking about advice for the unsuccessful.

What about the people who never found their calling, are not successful in traditional or frankly any terms, and haven’t had the opportunity to be truly good at anything, but instead forced by their circumstances and bad choices into a life they never wanted?

There’s a long section about callings in Second Act. Here are a few thoughts.

1. You do know that having a calling doesn’t always make you “happy”? Many moral callings are unattainable. (Think of zookeepers and animal shelter workers, or climate activists.) It’s a common trope of medical dramas and spy stories: the hero is compelled to do something they know they cannot complete in a morally satisfactory manner.

2. Callings don’t always arrive like revelations. The psychologists Bryan J. Dik and Ryan D. Duffy have said that a calling is not always an undeniable or transcendent feeling early in life but can be “an ongoing process of evaluating the purpose and meaningfulness of activities within a job and their contribution to the common good”. Maybe you found it already…

3. On the question of not having the opportunity, the “sit your ass in the chair and type” advice about writing generalises. Yes, you are busy. But ten minutes a day is better than nothing and you do have ten minutes. Stop drinking. Stop watching TV. Stop hoovering. Stop whatever you need to stop. If you wait for the right circumstances, you will grow old waiting. (On the issue of circumstances, there’s a whole chapter in Second Act. I might write about that another time. It’s too long for this post.)

4. I suspect the joining of success and calling complicates this question. What if your “calling” is to play the trumpet as an amateur or listen to lots of music? What if it’s to run a mid-level literature and ideas Substack, come to that? Does the level of worldly success attached to a calling matter? Isn’t this just about taking something seriously? Do you have to be “truly good” at your calling?

5. Some late bloomers start their calling very late. Grandma Moses picked up a paintbrush in retirement. This is a “latent calling”. Moses genuinely didn’t have the time to do anything artistic until retirement (she was a farmer). Bill Traylor is another example. He was born into slavery, and later became homeless. In his eighties someone gave him drawing materials to help him pass the time. (Note, his work wasn’t appreciated until after his death, having been collected by a group of local artists. Finding your calling doesn’t always mean being successful.)

6. Moses needed little help being told what to do. But, this question is about those who don’t initially see their path. The answer is to do more things. It’s a question of sampling. Probably, you know what you are good at and what you want to do: the question is, what you are dedicated at and how can you apply it. Audrey Sutherland had no idea she would end up solo-exploring in the Artic when she began swimming and walking the coast of a Hawaiian island in her forties. She did know she had to go exploring. (She was also a single mother to four children. Talk about busy…)

7. Do you lack a calling or do you lack a goal? From Second Act:

   A calling or vocation can be more motivating than a specific goal. And wanting to do something just for the sake of doing it – because you love comedy or music, because you find political news compelling, because you just want to understand something – is often essential to discovering your goal.

8. Late bloomers iterate until they succeed. Their career paths are meandering. but developing slowly can work much better. People like Manfred von Richthofen, Django Reinhard, and Jerry Seinfeld work this way: slowly, painstakingly. David Epstein covers this in Range. For a case study, read the chapter I posted about Penelope Fitzgerald.

9. This slow, iterative process is what David Galenson found in his study of artists. For “experimental artists” every piece of work is an experiment in finding out what sort of creator they are. Late bloomers become “truly good” piece by piece. Stamina matters. You do not simply wake up one day and discover that you are Toni Morrison. (See point 3.)

10. To explain this in a simple framework, I use explore/exploit. After a period of exploring (meandering, inefficiency, slow development) late bloomers find their focus—and opportunity—and switch into exploiting. They look around for a long time but when they find what they want to work on they make a significant change. Sometimes this is because they meet new people or go to new places, sometimes they have made themselves available for luck. Either way, what matters is that they were prepared, they did something to open up their opportunities. If you decline to participate, the world will decline to pay attention. As Samuel Johnson said, “Many complain of neglect who never tried to attract regard.”

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