The world needs us to be ourselves
“For me to be a saint means to be myself.”
THOMAS MERTON
American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, and scholar of comparative religion. Before he became a monk, Merton studied English at Columbia University in NYC. Interesting side note: one of his closest friends at Columbia was John Slate, who went on to be a founding partner at Skadden.
Merton died on this day (December 10) in 1968, 53 years ago at the age of 53.
When Parker Palmer was a 10-year old growing up on the North shore of Chicago, he wanted to be a pilot.
Parker’s father had a colleague who’d flown in the Navy, and the retired pilot’s Irish eyes twinkled when he told stories of flying missions in the Pacific.
Parker was sold.
He began reading everything he could about aviation, and he even started making his own books.
Unlike most boys [...] I spent long hours creating eight- and twelve-page books about aviation. I would turn a sheet of paper sideways; draw a vertical line down the middle; make diagrams of, say, the cross-section of a wing; roll the sheet into a typewriter; and peck out a caption explaining how air moving across an airfoil creates a vacuum that lifts the plane. Then I would fold that sheet in half along with several others I had made, staple the collection together down the spine, and painstakingly illustrate the cover.
- Parker Palmer
But despite Parker’s fascination with flying, he never earned his pilot’s license. He went a different direction.
Parker studied philosophy and became a Quaker. A pacifist.
Then he became the Dean of Studies at Pendle Hill, a Quaker community on a 23-acre campus outside of Philadelphia.
Then he became an author and educator who published ten books and lots of essays on issues like education, community, leadership, and spirituality.
Instead of flying planes, Parker founded the Center for Courage and Renewal and earned 13 honorary doctorates along the way.
Today, Parker is 82 years old and lives with his wife in Madison, WI. He would say he used his time well. Despite his early interest in flying, he realized he wasn’t created to be a pilot.
He did the work he was created for instead.
When we’re growing up, we experience an almost universal desire to become someone else. Steph Curry. Elon Musk. Taylor Swift. Oprah. Or our father’s navy pilot friend.
By the time we reach our 20s, 30s and 40s, many of us start to feel an even more fundamental desire to become who we were created to be.
But too often, we never figure that part out.
There’s a short Hasidic tale that captures this sentiment.
Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, 'In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'
Why were you not Zusya.
What prevents us from becoming ourselves?
Maybe our natural gifts were muted by parents, teachers, or cultural expectations. As we get older, maybe we assume responsibilities and roles that run crosswise to the grain of our soul. Sometimes the momentum of those responsibilities carries us away.
That’s how burnout happens. It doesn’t come from working too hard.
Burnout comes from doing work we weren’t created to do.
One of Mark Cuban’s first jobs out of college was as a salesman at a computer store. He was fired after failing to open the store one day because he was busy with a potential client. It was the last time he ever worked for someone else.
JK Rowling was a secretary for the London office of Amnesty International. But she spent too much time writing fiction on her work computer. So she was fired.
Isaac Newton’s mother removed him from his job as overseer of his family farm in Lincolnshire because it was clear he hated the work.
When we’re doing the work we were created for, it will look like work to everyone else. But it will feel like play to us. But finding that kind of work is only possible if we first understand our gifts… if we recognize the innate strengths we too often take for granted because they come naturally.
And if that’s what we’re trying to figure out, it can be helpful to look back at our childhood for clues.
We might discover something both obvious and unexpected.
When Parker Palmer was in his 50s and writing his third book, he found some of the old aviation books he created when he was a kid, and he had an epiphany.
I suddenly saw the truth, and it was more obvious than I had imagined. I didn't want to be a pilot or an aeronautical engineer or anything else related to aviation. I wanted to be an author, to make books--a task I have been attempting from the third grade to this very moment!
The world doesn’t need us to be the next Steph Curry, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, or Oprah. It doesn’t need us to be our father’s fighter pilot friend.
The world needs us to become ourselves.
…in the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'
