Chapter 9: See You Tomorrow
“See you tomorrow! Lavine and Helen! Both of the compositions about your True Calling are truly brilliant!”
“Thank you Ms. Jane!”
“By the way, have you seen Jay and Alex lately? They have not come to school for the last few days. Before that, they never missed a day at school. Alex’s mother told me he was not feeling well but nothing serious. As for Jay…”
“Jay told me he needed to get out of the country to handle a family matter.”
“I am starting to be concerned about them.”
“Don’t worry I think Jay will survive! As for Alex, I was surprised he didn’t show up if it was not serious. We called him a few times but he did not answer. He did message back saying he is ok and just need some time to rest.” Lavine replied.
“Hey why don’t we go and visit Alex?” Helen suggested.
“That’s a great idea!” Jane seconded before she led them to Alex’s house.
“Hey Alex, open the door! We are downstairs!” Lavine shouted after throwing a rock at Alex’s bedroom window.
“What are you doing Lavine?” Alex shouted back at Lavine from his window.
“How are you Alex? We are here to visit you.” Jane cried out with empathy and concern.
“O…Ms Jane”
Alex ran down to open the door for them before inviting them in.
“I thought you were ill?” Lavine asked with a wink at Alex.
“I am getting much better now” Alex responded squinting back at Lavine.
Lavine noticed there were usually large amount of written paper balls in the netted trash bin. He went and picked up two of them while Alex was talking to the others. Lavine carefully unfolded and restored the paper balls.
Lavine could not help but read it aloud:
“My True Calling is to become a great Professional Basketball Player…”
“My True Calling is to become a great Writer…”
“How many True Callings do you really have? Alex!”
“Give me that!” Alex snatched two wrinkled papers from Lavine.
“O…Alex, you were still writing the True Calling Composition when you were ill! That’s commendable!” exclaimed Jane.
“They were only drafts. I have not yet decided what my True Calling is…”
“So that’s why you are not coming to school!” Lavine accused Alex with a mischievous smile.
Alex turned to Jane without saying anything.
“It’s ok Alex. We are all concerned about you.” Jane reinitiated the conversation with a reassuring tone.
“This is the first time in my life that I feel completely lost. I have been keeping myself busy learning as much as I can about the core school subject and joining all sorts of extracurricular activities. I know a lot of things and may be good at some of them. However, I’ve never found any one thing that I can be great at, let alone my True Calling.”
“No problem, Alex. I’m sure if you think creatively enough you will be able to find your True Calling!” Lavine proposed.
“Shut up Lavine! I don’t have any natural talent like you. I can’t get the highest score all the time on all the science subjects like you. I need to study very hard just to get a slightly better than average score. I don’t have parents like Ms. Jane whom I can emulate. My parents never went to high school and were doing odd jobs to make ends meet. I have been leading a pretty ordinary life. Nothing dramatic has been. I still have not come across any career that I really love. I am not sure if I will ever find my True Calling?”
Holding off his urge to counter, Lavine looked to Jane for answer.
“A lots of people believed each of us was born with a True Calling. But the reality is most people never found it in their lifetime. Alex, you are right that you may never found your True Calling.”
Alex and the others were not able to make any comment as they did not expect to hear such a callous remark from the compassionate teacher.
“But I agree with Lavine. You should think about it more creatively. If you lost the key to your home and could not find it for hours, would you keep searching for the rest of your life or you will go to the Keysmith and create a new key? What if it is the key to your True Calling?” Jane continued.
“Wow. That’s right!” Lavine exclaimed.
“However, you will be the Keysmith yourself and your actions will be the tools that shape your life into a tailored job that truly suitable to you. Although you have not been able to go home yet while you are in the process of creating True Calling, you will stay in the temporary home you created for yourself. It may not be a 5 star hotel, but your temporary home will become better and better every day towards becoming the ideal home that is perfect for you through your actions. For example, if your ultimate ideal is becoming a professional basketball player, turning your hobby of playing basketball over the weekend into playing in an amateur league would be like adjusting your key towards your True Calling. The adjustment of your key must be based on feedback after trying it out. If your enjoyment for basketball started to disappear after playing in the amateur league, you may consider adjusting your True Calling towards a different direction.”
“So, instead of finding my True Calling, I can create my True Calling?” Alex asked the question with new-found enthusiasm.
“Yes. You can create your True Calling. You can continuously creating the hypothesis of True Calling based on what you enjoy, what you are good at, and what is meaningful to you. And then you keep testing and adjusting through your actions until you get it. In the meantime, you live your life according to a vocation which is getting closer and closer to what is most suitable to you.”
“Can I really? I don’t really have any special talent. Nor did I have any life-changing experience. No car chase. No explosion. My life is just…ordinary. I don’t even know if I deserve to have something like True Calling.” Alex murmured as his self-doubt was creeping back.
“Let me ask you something. Who is the owner of this composition?” Jane asked as she got hold of the wrinkled paper with Alex’s writing.
“I am.”
“Why?”
‘Because I wrote it. I think have its copyright or something.’
“Correct. How about the paper? You didn’t create the paper yourself, did you? You didn’t chop the tree or anything like that, right?”
“I didn’t create the paper, but I paid for it!”
“So can I say you deserve to have this Alex’s composition as the creator and the paid user?”
“Of course!”
“By creating the key to your True Calling, you are both the Keysmith and the paid customer who pays for it by the efforts of your actions and the precious time of your life. Creating True Calling is not just about setting and achieving fulfilling ultimate career goal. It is also about doing your best to verify and adjust the suitability of the goal while enjoying the process.”
“So if I simply say I will be a great Professional Basketball Player, I deserve to and will become one?”
“You deserve it, but it does not guarantee you will become one. You deserve to have the ambition you set for your life. Of course there are external factors you cannot control, but you can maximize your chance of actualizing it by taking the right actions.”
“Right actions?”
“Right actions would be…setting an imperfect True Calling for yourself; Doing something about your ambition instead of only fanaticizing it; Trying different things out to see which ones you enjoyed and were good at; adjusting your actions and the description of your True Calling according to the feedbacks from your actions.
“That’s what I have been doing! Trying many things out! But gradually the interesting yesterday became just another routine day today. Tomorrow would be another ordinary…I am just getting frustrated.”
“There is something missing.”
“Which is?”
“Meaning.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am talking about finding and defining your own personal meaning in what you do. I am an ordinary English Teacher. I could go home after school today instead of coming here. I chose to come here to visit you because it means something special to me. It means I never give up on my student. You keep saying you are ordinary, but I have never seen anyone working as hard as you to try things out in order to find your True Calling. You probably joined more extracurricular activities last year than what I joined when I was at school for the whole time. At the same time, you always managed to keep the results of all your school subjects above average. You energy and passion are extraordinary. You even kept writing your True Calling when you were ill. You have the natural gift of creating your True Calling!”
“I guess you are right!”
“My intention of giving you the composition assignment is for you to start somewhere and be aware of the concept of “Creating True Calling” early rather than forcing you to come up with a perfect vocation for your future. I think you already have all the writings you need to complete your assignment. Just look at all the paper balls in the bin! You can start with becoming a professional basketball player or writer. Or both!”
“Both?”
“Well some people have more than one home. I don’t see why you cannot have two True Callings or more.”
“Yes!”
“I’ll see you tomorrow? Alex?”
“See you tomorrow! An extraordinary tomorrow!”