What is a Good Life? #76
Listening To Your Vocation with Parker J. Palmer
On the 76th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Parker J. Palmer. Parker is a writer, speaker, and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality, and social change. He is the founder and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley, fourteen honorary doctorates, two Distinguished Achievement Awards from the National Educational Press Association, and an Award of Excellence from the Associated Church Press. He is the author of ten books—including several award-winning titles—that have sold over two million copies and been translated into twelve languages. Among them is Let Your Life Speak, which is comfortably the best book I’ve read about vocation and purpose.
In this glorious conversation, Parker shares his journey of conversing with and listening to life, revealing more of his natural self in the process, his gifts and limitations, choosing the less conventional path, and ultimately guiding him to a life of vocation. He shares his experiences of depression, the significance of coming down to the ground, prioritising being real over being noble, and the need for silence and settling our minds for listening to life and for clarity.
This episode offers much wisdom to contemplate and is filled with experiences, anecdotes, and realisations that will present you with many invitations to explore life differently. Parker has a really unique take on finding vocation and purpose and practical ways to track and follow life.
The weekly clip from the podcast (4 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (68 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
In this conversation, Parker suggests that a significant part of finding one's vocation is closely listening to and observing our lives. When we do this, our gifts and limitations can become very clear.
We have created a bit of a cult around pushing beyond our limits. We take pride in it. But where does that leave us in knowing our natural self? We do things we don’t want to do and, once they are done, no matter how much the experience takes from us, we like to point out how we did it. Resilience is great in some cases, but it also has a shadow side. This includes working when we are sick, not resting when we are already tired, or repeatedly sticking to a job that makes us suffer or an environment we simply know is not right for us.
Parker's idea of limitations refers to the inherent boundaries and constraints within each individual that define what they can and cannot do well. These limitations are not necessarily negative; instead, they are natural aspects of oneself that help shape a realistic understanding of one's capacities and guide a more authentic and fulfilling life.
For example, Parker mentioned that if at any point in his life he had ever wanted to be a world-class ballerina, it would not have been possible based on what he knows about himself. The American dream, as he puts it, wants to tell everyone they can be anything they want to be, but that is simply not the case, and there is no harm in acknowledging this. He pointed to his experience in academia when considering a presidential role at an institution. He mentioned several limitations this role would have entailed, one being the act of “glad-handing” people, particularly for money from people he didn’t particularly enjoy.
What he suggests is that instead of continuously trying to overcome our limitations, what if we started to listen to them for finding a better sense vocation in life? To be clear, this doesn’t mean quitting anything that is hard, walking away from challenges, or not putting in the time to hone a skill or craft. It means identifying something that clearly encroaches on your natural self and continuously causes you emotional, physical, spiritual, or psychological pain.
I am increasingly curious why we spend much of our lives viewing our limitations as something we must work on and overcome. Over the course of these 200+ interviews, I’ve spoken with several highly successful people by society’s standards who have clearly pointed to the fact that they lean into their gifts rather than fixating on or attempting to alter their limitations (While I won’t go into it in this reflection, Parker also notes the problems we experience when going beyond the limits of our gifts as well).
Previously, I’d have loved to hear examples of someone who generally feels naturally introverted overcoming this by doing something very befitting of an extrovert, viewing it as a great development. However, now I’d more wonder what gift of theirs they have potentially hindered or taken energy away from.
For me, the sense of understanding what it entails to be naturally me and figuring out how that can interconnect with the world around me is one of life’s great feelings—being all that I naturally am. It removes a lot of the comparison, so much of the thoughts around milestones, and the sense of ever being an imposter in my own life. It can also lead you to taking less conventional paths. In Parker’s case, this meant leaving behind tenure and rejecting the role of president at another institution to live in a Quaker community earning the same as everyone else. In my case, it was being on a team to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange one year and the next living in the countryside of Peru for a year with little other intention but to create enough stillness and quiet to hear what I wanted to do next in life.
‘How do you know that you are on your path – because it disappears. That’s how you know.’ - David Whyte
To be clear, this doesn’t mean taking the easy path, as uncertainty is going to be a big part of the experience. Sometimes it can simply stem from listening to the sense of “I cannot not do this” and that being enough in a moment to commit to something you have very little further clarity around how it will unfold.
What if, instead of fixating on all that you ought to be, should be, and the things you ought to fix, you focused on realising and observing all that you naturally are? For me, this is the joyous experience we are really lacking in life. Too much of our focus is on the outside—where it positions or what status it gives us—and we compare ourselves to our peers or people we see online. However, I don’t think there has ever been a clearer time in my lifetime to suggest that the conventional myths or wisdom of our prevailing culture aren’t really adding up anymore.
Perhaps if we want to feel more at one with ourselves and the natural world around us, aligning with our natural selves may offer a timely antidote.
3. Full Episode - Listening To Your Vocation with Parker J. Palmer - What is a Good Life? #76
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4. This week’s Questions
If you were to closely listen to your limitations, are they informing you to take a different direction in a particular area of your life?
Is there a sense of vocation emerging in your life that you are refusing to accept or acknowledge?
About Me
I am an artist based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed around 200 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me to explore your own lines of self-inquiry, experiences I create to stimulate more meaningful group conversations and connection, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.