Becoming Who You Are

Parker talks about his life, his determination and success and his vocations in life. He explains that the concept of vocation is 'rooted in a deep distrust of selfhood.' He spoke about this deep-rootness of vocation crated a gap between who he was and who he was supposed to be, making living his own life hard for him. One thing Parker said that really struck me was that our vocation isn't a goal in our life that we need to work towards and eventually reach in order to feel whole, complete, like we have our mission in life. Our vocation is something each and every one of us already possess. Vocation comes from the voice within and calls us to be the person we were born to be, not a person that we need to change into becoming.

Parker continues to talk about how we often times spend the first half of our lives losing who we truly are, then we spend the second half of our lives trying to gain back who we are. He talks about his granddaughter and how he plans to take not of her as a small child and the things she says, does, believes, trusts, etc., then he will give it to  her when she becomes an teenager or a young adult to remind her who she really, truly is and how as a baby she was being her true self. This idea that we are who we need to be and who we are called to be in life is exactly who we are as a child. I can see that in my everyday life my ideas and my thoughts are conformed into the opinions of the people around me and the people in my life. After reading this passage I realized that what he has said is true. Throughout middle school and high school my beliefs and my ideas and opinions have been changed to please and agree with those around me. I realize that who I was and who I was trying to be was something completely different than who I am and who I am called to be. I need to refocus myself on my life, my beliefs, my ideas and my opinions to figure out who I truly am. I think it is ok for me to listen to the opinions and ideas of others to help form my own opinion, but completely changing mine to fit their mold of who they want me to be is not my vocation in life and not who God has called me to be.