Vocation

This week I was asked to reflect on my life and my values in order to figure out what is important to me. This seemed like a relatively easy question, and I did not have to hard of a time coming up with my list. Though maybe not all encompassing, I was certainly able to roughly catalog those things that I believe are important. The challenge then came in trying to order these important things.

In some ways attempting to order my list of important things made me pit my different selves against each other. The student in me was adamant that my academic performance was the most important. But my spiritual self countered, saying that in fact participating in Unitarian Universalist community was most important. The daughter in me of course, deflated both of these selves, certain that my family relationships were the most important. The different pieces of my identity: the religious educator, the best friend, the roommate, the intern, all wanted me to decide that their role was clearly the most important.

I figured out that my priorities fit into three basic categories: my spiritual life, my professional life, and my personal life.

From this list I’ve sort of decided that the best way to organize these things is not to list them as a hierarchy, but to keep them in a balance. As tempting as it seems, spending all my time goofing off an ordering pizza with my roommates is not the best use of my time, but its still important to build and maintain relationships with the people around me. In the same way, I could spend every day at Mugar studying, but if I graduated college with perfect grades, but no friends or professional connections I wouldn’t be on the right path either.

This exercise has taught me to look critically at my values and set priorities based on those beliefs. After looking through my priorities, it is clear to me that none of these priorities is enough on its own, but a balance of them is the way to authentically live my values.