This Work is Calling Me
“Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.”
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For nearly 30 years I have reported for duty daily, one cog among millions, as a mercenary in the so-called Knowledge Economy. I've rented out my brain to the highest bidder in exchange for a reliable salary, good health benefits and the illusion of financial stability.
Despite a lack of any training I thrived in this world because I could think critically, outside the box, and wasn't constrained by indoctrination into any particular vocational dogma. I learned fast and worked hard and I aligned myself with mentors and allies that valued my creativity and were willing to overlook my lack of formal business or technical training.
Work was most edifying to me when it was an intellectual puzzle that could be solved through a combination of influence, business savvy, technical acumen and most of all, common sense.
Even though I played the part -- wore the corporate uniform and spoke the lingo -- I often felt like an impostor, as if I was trespassing in a world in which I didn't truly belong. But I had a young family, and the regular paycheck, comradery of my colleagues and evergreen learning opportunities (I started my career in the early 90s, at the beginning of the IT revolution) were all powerful distractions.
But I always felt something was missing, like there were parts of me, important parts, that lay dormant or which were atrophying, that were not being exercised or challenged. It gnawed at me that, at the end of a long workday, I couldn't gather my children around me, hustle them outside, and point proudly at the fruit of my labor.
The truth is that my kids have no idea what I've spent the past three decades laboring at; they don't have the language or context to describe the contributions for which I've been compensated and which have enabled me to buy them clothes and cars and iPhones and take them on nice vacations and live in a comfortable, spacious home. I've tried to explain it to them but their eyes glaze over when the jargon starts to flow: business transformation; profit optimization; market development; business model innovation.
Blah, blah, blah.
I used to make things. As a child I loved to draw and I made art prolifically. Later, as a young man, I apprenticed as a carpenter, learning the trade from an irascible German master nicknamed Slim who was anything but. The work was challenging but I enjoyed being outside, the sun on my face and shoulders, and I liked how my body felt after a long day, spent but buzzing from an honest day's physical labor.
And I learned how to build stuff like houses and decks and bookcases and furniture. I learned how to hang windows and doors and use a level and plumb line, a router and compound miter saw. Slim was barely literate but he was an engineering savant. Above all, he taught me that there were other types of intelligence that I had never considered.
Although I was a "college boy" (one of the few on the crew) and destined for a career as a desk-bound professional I relished learning a trade and have called upon these skills throughout my life. They have helped me feel competent and confident and have enabled me to be more self-sufficient in the maintenance of my own home. And I also felt pride every time I drove by a house that I helped frame or stood on a deck that I built or looked through a window that I hung.
But what I've come to realize is that both of my careers -- as mind mercenary and as brawny builder of things -- while satisfying on many levels, have left me feeling spiritually empty. They haven't been in service to something larger than myself, something transcendent. They haven't exercised my heart.
As I have written elsewhere, my cancer diagnosis and subsequent journey to wellness awakened me to my calling: to inspire and teach people how to take control of their health and well-being, before it's too late, and to broadcast this message as far and as wide as possible.
This is something I can't stop thinking about, and over the past few years I've started to reorient my personal and professional life around what I believe to be the central problem to be solved: how to raise awareness about the transformative and healing power of lifestyle medicine. My mission: to make the prevention of chronic illness the new normal.
This calling, unlike my other "jobs", requires the engagement of all parts of my being: my mind, my body and my spirit.
It requires intellectual rigor to solve complex health and health-related business problems. How can the impact of lifestyle medicine be scaled to as many people as possible? What are the most effective treatment modalities to prevent, reverse and heal different chronic illnesses? Where will the next health innovations come from? What's the most effective way of changing the healthcare default from treatment to prevention?
It requires physical embodiment. It draws me out from behind my desk to engage with people about one of the most important things in their lives: their health. I can help people gain more intimacy with their bodies, teach them how to listen to their bodies, to strengthen their muscles and mobilize aging joints to ensure that muscles and connective tissue remain supple and flexible so that they can be active throughout their lives, even into their golden years.
And, finally, the piece that has been missing: my new career, my calling, requires an openness and sensitivity to approach people empathetically, to listen to their needs, their fears and their motivations in order to coach them to be the healthiest version of themselves that they can possibly be. I am being called to give people the gift of what I've learned, to give them hope, to inspire them with my story, from a place of love and a genuine, heartfelt desire to help people in need.
This is my mission now. This is what I'll spend the rest of my life doing. Not (only) because I want to; not because it will provide me with the best return; not because I believe it will bring me recognition or appreciation or acknowledgment.
Because I have to.