Let Your Life Speak
by Parker J. Palmer
Chapter II
"Now I Become Myself"
Copyright ©2000 by Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers
San Francisco, CA

I had always thought that the meaning of this paperwork
was obvious: fascinated with flight, I wanted to be a pilot, or
at least an aeronautical engineer. But recently, when I found
a couple of these literary artifacts in an old cardboard box, I
suddenly saw the truth, and it was more obvious than I had
imagined. I didn't want to be a pilot or an aeronautical engi-
neer or anything else related to aviation. I wanted to be an
author, to make books--a task I have been attempting from
the third grade to this very moment!

From the beginning, our lives lay down clues to selfhood
and vocation, though the clues may be hard to decode. But
trying to interpret them is profoundly worthwhile--especially
when we are in our twenties or thirties or forties, feeling pro-
foundly lost, having wandered, or been dragged, far away from
our birthright gifts.

Those clues are helpful in counteracting the conven-
tional concept of vocation, which insists that our lives must be
driven by "oughts." As noble as that may sound, we do not find
our callings by conforming ourselves to some abstract moral
code. We find our callings by claiming authentic selfhood, by
being who we are, by dwelling in the world as Zusya rather
than straining to be Moses. The deepest vocational question is
not "What ought I to do with my life?" It is the more elemen-
tal and demanding "Who am I? What is my nature?"

Everything in the universe has a nature, which means
limits as well as potentials, a truth well known by people who

Now I Become Myself

15

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