Passion Profession Vocation and Mission
How I distinguish what absorbs me, what sustains me, where I feel called to contribute, and the purpose I choose to pursue.
ELEMENTS OF LIFE - WHAT MOVES ME
Passion Profession Vocation and Mission
When I consider what to do with my time, several questions arise. What interests me? What can I do well? How will I sustain myself? What do I want my effort to accomplish?
I find four words useful in examining these questions: Passion, Profession, Vocation and Mission.
Passion describes what draws my interest and holds my attention. I want to explore it, understand it, or spend time doing it. That interest can give me energy, though it does not automatically give me competence.
Profession concerns work I undertake with sufficient capability and responsibility to serve another person’s need and earn a livelihood. Enjoying the subject helps, but the person relying on me also needs dependable delivery.
Vocation, as I understand it, is a sense of being drawn towards particular work or contribution. I feel that something is worth doing and that I have, or wish to develop, something useful to offer.
Mission gives my effort a chosen direction. It concerns an outcome or purpose I am prepared to pursue through continuing commitment.
These elements can support one another. An interest may lead me to develop a skill, which becomes professional work. Experience in that work may reveal a contribution I wish to make more deliberately.
They can also remain separate. Something I love doing may deserve a place in my life without becoming a source of income. Work that sustains me may be worthwhile even when it is not my greatest passion.
I would like to understand these distinctions before expecting one activity to fulfil every need.
Together, the four elements help me ask what place an activity deserves in my life—and what I am willing to give it.
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