Finding Meaningful Work: I Thought I Failed But Maybe I Didn't

Must Your Job Be Your “Calling”?

Hello. I’m Don Boivin and this is Shy Guy Meets the Buddha. Thanks for being here. If you like what you are about to read, please consider a small token of appreciation; a tip or paid subscription would be very generous and so helpful. Thank you! 🙏 (“Buy Me a Coffee” is an online tipping platform where you can tip as little as $5 to your favorite hard-working writer 😊)

In Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, the protagonist, after a decades-long spiritual quest—interrupted only by a career as a rich but unhappy merchant—finds his way to a peaceful riverside, where he settles down as the aging operator of a small ferryboat, paddling travelers across the slow-flowing waters and listening to their stories, confessions, and dreams. As his reputation as a man of patience and wisdom spreads, pilgrims begin to journey from near and far to visit and learn from “the one who [sits] there calmly.”

I’ve read this book at least three times in my life. Various scenarios have stayed with me over the years—the young Siddhartha standing obstinately in his father’s room throughout the long night as he awaits permission to leave the family home; how as a merchant he (at first) prioritizes people and experiences over profit and success; his fraught relationship with his own son and the realization that he must let go of his expectations—but it is this position he finally lands, as ferryman—not a job so much as an embodiment and metaphor of everything that he has both shed and become—that is the most visceral for me. In my younger days I dreamed of literally manifesting the vocation for myself (ignoring that the job no longer exists). A simple and peaceful life by the side of a river, doing my work but never worrying, talking with people about life’s biggest questions, and passing the rest of the hours sitting quietly on a stump, whittling perhaps, listening to the babbling waters, and watching the shadows of the trees circle slowly about.

The struggle for meaningful work has been a persistent force in my life. And it is a quest whose resolution has evaded me. I think the futile quest was motivated by these two questions:

Who am I?
Who do I want to be?

I never really answered those questions. These days I am beginning to realize that that is because there is no answer. I am nobody. Like all phenomenal things, I am ever-changing. To try to answer the question Who am I? would be pointless, because the answer would change before I could even verbalize it.

One Thing

I used to feel envious of people who felt so passionately called to one thing above all others, they would risk wreck and ruin to be able to do that one thing. I remember well the novel by William Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, about a man who abandons his family and a successful career in finance to pursue the unstable life of an artist (loosely based on the story of Paul Gauguin). 

There was a time when I thought it was because of my early mistakes and family responsibilities that I couldn’t pursue art with such single-minded abandon. But I now know that is not true. It’s just not who I am. I love the novelty of trying new things, and have not ever wanted to do one single thing only, year after year.

I have built guitars and boats, sold collectible first-editions online, tried my hand at wood and concrete sculpture, made natural soap, learned paper crafts, written hundreds of songs, “flipped” houses, taken up piano, become a full-time adult college student and earned my degree, been published in college literary magazines and remodeling journals, and now am passionately throwing myself into my Substack publication, Shy Guy Meets the Buddha. Today it occurred to me that I would love to build a Zen garden in my yard; and I may just do that! (I have borrowed a library book on the subject.)

This kind of experimental lifestyle does not lend itself to a dedicated career or vocation.

Granted, I have mostly made my “living” as a carpenter. But, though I became a skilled craftsman, I was never fully satisfied with that, and always dreamed of something more personally, spiritually, or intellectually fulfilling, something that would make me feel complete.

Callings

I like how John O'Donohue, in Anam Cara, claims that our bodies are "ancient clay" and carry echoes of our ancestors. I don't believe it's just a metaphor. In that respect, we feel "called" because there are so many messages lying deep within our makeup. Within my structure is a hunter on the savannah, a story-teller in the red rock canyons, a politician in Ancient Greece, a potter in Mesopotamia, an enslaved girl in Egypt, a shy, dreaming boy by a river in Africa...

We try to listen to the messages that make the most sense, that feel right, that speak the loudest. We can apply our interpretation of those messages to our activities in modern society, to our own place and circumstances, in many different ways.

I keep listening...

The Practice of Life

Here is

Maia Duerr

’s take on work and callings, from a comment she made on my last post, “When Everything that Changes has Changed.” Maia wrote the book Work that Matters: Create a Livelihood that Reflects Your Core Intention, and she authors the Substack newsletter, The Practice of Life:

I have not found it so helpful to focus on a calling or specific vocation. I think that can take us down roads that often end up as dead ends because we get overly focused on the ‘what’ at the expense of the ‘why’ and the ‘how.’ One example I often think of is how those of us who love teaching and learning head into the field of education for a career, which is often demoralizing because so much of education is not actually about learning.

For me, it’s more helpful to think of my intention and the gifts I have to offer, and to be open to discovering how they may show up in work settings and forms I never would have imagined.

It was Maia who first encouraged me to look at my own reasons for staying in the construction field for so long. Looking more closely, I learned that carpentry actually does fulfill, in many ways, my gifts and intentions. I love the outdoors, I prefer to work alone, and I thrive on working with my hands, taking raw materials and turning them into something useful or beautiful.

I once tried working in a bookstore. Knowing how much I love books and reading, I thought I would be happy there, but I was very much mistaken. I missed the sky and the fresh air (the store was in a mall), I never could get comfortable wearing “dress-up clothes,” the cash register just perplexed me, and perhaps most important, I wasn’t creating anything; I was just moving product.

The Carpenter

I have a client and friend who owns a primitive 14-acre camp on a lake on Cape Cod; a summer destination for herself and her family. To own such a property on Cape Cod, where real estate values have skyrocketed and where anything along the waterfront has for the most part migrated into the hands of the rich, who build their Cape Cod “cottages” in the style of former President Grover Cleveland’s “Gray Gables” or Michelle and Barack Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard summer home (ie: very big), is a rarity.

My friend inherited the camp from her grandfather, and will pass it on to her own children. The rough wooden cottage was once a village cobbler’s shop, and was transported by her grandfather—probably with the help of a team of horses—to the property. She has been enjoying the serene location on a wooded hillside overlooking the quiet lake, far from the excitement of the popular Cape Cod seashore and its shops and restaurants, all of her life. Her children and grandchildren are creating their own memories in this undisturbed oasis.

All this to say that working on her cottage is more than satisfying. I have replaced much of the cedar-shake siding, re-built the outhouse, repaired some flooring and window trim, and am about to start replacing the front steps. The steps are a little too steep for my friend and her husband to manage safely, and have become rather rickety. But: though a safer, code-compliant railing must be added, and the porch will grow one additional step as each riser shrinks from 8 to 7 inches, she doesn’t want the overall look to change too much. She showed me a picture of her family sitting on the steps in the 1970s, and told me that she takes a picture every year as her family grows. This is what matters most to her, and I will keep that in mind as I work.

Oh, did I mention that the camp has no power source? Fortunately, I bought a portable generator a few years ago and will fire that up to power my saws and equipment. I’ll keep the generator on the opposite side of the building and run a long extension cord so that my workdays in this peaceful location are not too much spoiled by the noise.

“…knowing that life on Earth and your contribution to it is beautiful and helpful.” Thich Nhat Hanh

Why am I sharing this story? I guess it’s to say that, though it’s been over forty years since I took my first carpentry job at age nineteen, and much of those years have actually been in the service of those rich homeowners I mentioned earlier and their ever-growing need to enjoy architectural luxury and ease, and though I’ve been telling people that I’m totally burned out on OPH (Other People’s Houses), there are times when my job comes close to what Thich Nhat Hanh describes as “the joy of knowing that life on Earth and your contribution to it is beautiful and helpful.”

This coming week, while working by myself at the camp, I may not pretend I’m Siddhartha ferrying my clients along their spiritual paths—I will probably not be visited by anybody at all, let alone those seeking wisdom and guidance—but I will, at some point each day, shut off the generator and sit in one of my friend’s Adirondack chairs by the lake. I’ll listen to the waves lapping at the leaf-strewn shore, and I will let that sound, like the thousand voices of Siddhartha’s river, teach me “how to listen with a quiet heart.”

I’m no longer seeking a vocation, or to hear my “true calling.” The call of the waves, and the osprey, and the wind in the pines, is enough for me.

DB

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Books Mentioned

~Maia Duer. Work that Matters: Create a Livelihood that Reflects Your Core Intention
~Thich Nhat Hanh. Work: How to Find Joy and Meaning in Each Hour of the Day
~Hermann Hesse. Siddhartha
~William Somerset Maugham. The Moon and Sixpence
~John O'Donohue. Anam Cara

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