Week 12: Vocation

One of the quotes that stood out to me from this week’s readings was the quote: “If we can learn to read our own responses to our own experience […] we will receive the guidance we need to live more authentic lives” (Palmer 6). This quote is from chapter one from Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak in which he talks about how one’s vocation comes within, and that we must listen to it if we want to understand ourselves better. I agree with him on this because I think that only we can know what our purpose in life is. I believe that we instinctively know what we want out of life but are too afraid to go after it because we might think that it will not be worth it, or we think that our dreams are too big or that we will be judged by other people.

We experience so much influence from outside when it comes to deciding what we want to do with our lives which is why it can be hard sometimes to find out what we were meant to do and who we are meant to be. But if we take the time to look at our life and reflect on the decisions we have made in the past, I believe that we will find out who we are deep inside. Of course, people change over the course of time, but I think that there are certain character traits that we are born with that “will manifest [themselves] in any role [we] play” (21). We cannot help but be ourselves which is why we should not fight against our intuition but rather listen to it so that we can live the life that we were meant to live. By living our truth, we can inspire others to do the same.