Vocational Merry-Go-Round

Vocation is simple, if you just stay on track.

Graduate from high school and go immediately to college. When college graduation looms, apply for jobs or to graduate schools, while you are surrounded by peers and mentors who can help you figure out what's next.

Stay in the chute, and your forward motion will propel you into a job, maybe even a career. Most importantly, you will have health insurance.

Do not, under any circumstances, question any choice you have already made. Do not stop to reconsider your vocation. And by all means, do not acknowledge any personal qualities that may disqualify you from being what you have chosen to become.

Because if you do, the straightforward trajectory that has given your life structure will become a spiral, and its centrifugal force will spew you out, and you will find yourself sitting on your ass watching the merry-go-round, well, go round.

It will take a while to recouperate, to find the strength to drag yourself to your feet. You'll spend a lot of time watching the horses dance on past, searching for the courage to leap forward onto the moving carousel. Enthusiasm and courage will ebb and flow within you, almost never at the same time. Just when you are ready to leap--when you really, really want to---your courage will fail you.

That's when it helps to stop imagining your leap as graceful and triumphant. You have to be willing to scrape your shins on the edge of the carousel, to land face-down under the galloping hooves. It's the only way to get back on the ride.