A few days ago, lured by the soft summer evening air, and reluctant to surrender the light, I took my dinner outside and ate it while reading a recent copy of the New York Times Magazine.
The piece that made the read worthwhile was a lovely interview with Krista Tippett, the host of NPR’s long-running show “On Being,” which is apparently being transformed into a podcast in the fall. To be honest, I never heard the show. But reading the interview, I wish I had.
There were numerous points Tippett made in the Times’ short interview transcript that resonated deeply and longingly with me. She talked about questions she asks her guests on the show to “get a sense of how someone thinks … so they will relax.” She explained that “we’ve all that this experience … when you know somebody gets you. You relax. You breathe. The other experience that we have all the time is when we’re with someone and we know we’re going to have to explain ourselves or defend ourselves.” I found myself wanting to be a guest on her show; to have someone actually making that kind of conscious effort to get me.
She also talked about “drawing out voices that deserve to be heard and shedding light on generative possibilities and robust goodness.” She said, “I talk about hope being a muscle. It’s not wishful thinking, and it’s not idealism. It’s an imaginative leap, which is what I’ve seen in people like John Lewis and Jane Goodall. These are people who said: ‘I refuse to accept that the world has to be this way.’ That’s a muscular hope.”
And finally, she talked about the idea of “callings.” “Your calling may be something you do that gives you joy but that you’re never going to get paid for,” she said. “It’s the things you do that amplify your best humanity.”
All of those things are ideas I fervently believe in. More than just wishing I could invite Tippett to a dinner party and have more conversation like that, I found myself wishing that I could have the kind of job she has, that would allow me to have those kinds of conversations all the time. Of course, one might argue that I’ve done something similar, through this website and the columns I’ve written, over the years, even if I’ve gotten paid little or nothing for a lot of it. But the thought led me to dig a little further into Tippett’s path, and how it diverged from mine.
One can never really know another person’s path, of course, because public facts give only a surface hint about all that lies beneath. But here’s the weird thing. In many ways, I could have been Tippett—or at least followed her path. I have the same insatiable curiosity for exploring the world, finding meaning, and understanding human searching and behavior that she does. And not only are we the same age, it turns out we were in the same graduating class at Brown University in the early 80s. Tippett majored in History, I majored in Semiotics. I could have actually known her; probably did run into her without even knowing it. Tippett studied and worked in Germany after graduation; I was an exchange student there. And but for a poorly packed moving van when I left Brown, which is another story entirely, I might very well have pursued a career in journalism from the start, just like she did.
So where and how do paths diverge? Well, there was the near-fatal car accident I had, my junior year of college, which affected many of my choices for the next few years (including the moving van). And perhaps I had more of a thirst for physical adventure than she did, which led me to a pilot’s license and the world and career field of aviation. I confess, I never had any desire to go to divinity school. And while I may not have interviewed all the deep thinkers Tippett has, I’m fairly sure she’s never flown a blimp at 30 mph across Europe, 500 feet above the ground, flown a U-2 spy plane high enough to see the curvature of the Earth, or stood alone on a glacier at 11,000 feet, awed into silence by the majesty of an ice-bound world without another human soul on the horizon.
But what I really found myself thinking about were the junctures in my recent life that feel as if they represent the biggest divergence from where I might have been, and where I find myself now. Between 2010 and 2014, when Tippett was already solidly established with her NPR show, my own career was at a critical juncture of change. My aviation magazine career was coming to an end in a way I was powerless to stop, just as the publishing industry was imploding. But just when, from a strictly career-focused perspective, I should have been throwing 150% of my time and energy into creating a new and fabulous career path, I found myself up against another calling; one which I reluctantly decided was more central and important in terms of what Tippet would call my “best humanity.”
The fact that I chose to finally get married wasn’t the conflict. It was that by doing so, I chose and agreed to take on the role of a full-time step-parent to a teenager who had been abused by his biological mother and bullied mercilessly by his older brother. That choice led me to leave my network of colleagues and friends in California in order to make a good home for him where he lived, on the East Coast. And being there for him; fully present, and trying to make up for the damage, and deal with its fallout, all of which required significant time and energy, took precedence over work focus or productivity.
At the same time, I undertook a far greater caretaking role for my aging parents. I’d always flown east to manage their surgeries and other medical emergencies, but when I moved east, my husband and I took on the burden of renovating and putting an addition on my mom’s childhood home—while living in that construction zone with our blended family—so it would be suitable for my parents to move into when they needed to. And two years later, when my parents’ health fell apart, I took on the added burden of not only managing their medical care, but clearing out and selling their New York home and moving them in with us, taking over primary caretaking duties. A year later, my husband and I moved 500 miles away, but I’ve remained the primary manager of my parents’ lives and care in that home ever since.
If my career had been on solid footing during that time, I probably could have maintained it. Maintaining is always easier than creating. But as a friend of mine, who’s now entered the same heart-breaking, soul-draining, high-maintenance caregiving stage with his parents, recently said to me, “Oh my god, Lane. I knew you were doing something hard, the past ten years, trying to build new career opportunities and directions. But now I realize, you were having to do that with only half your brain available.” Like Tippett said, it really is wonderful when someone gets you.
I believe in the importance of not only callings, but in following those callings. It matters, if our lives are to mean anything. But although we all like to think that following our passions and beliefs will result in a Joseph Campbell kind of “bliss,” callings are sometimes more closely tied to sacrifice. Just as there are victories that exhaust us, there are callings that cost us. That doesn’t make them any less worthy or important. It’s just the way things are.
Whenever I long for the road not taken, however, I stop and remind myself that there is a cost to every choice. What if I hadn’t followed those callings? Would I have rather had my parents dead, or suffering, or neglected in some state-run nursing home? No. Would I have rather been without my husband, whom I love dearly and with whom I’ve created such a rich and rewarding life? No. Do I wish I hadn’t had to make those sacrifices to protect my loved ones’ well-being and happiness? Of course I do. I also wish I had $5 Million in my retirement account.
Beyond that, I remind myself that bliss is not actually a requirement for long-term happiness. For that, we only require three things: a sense of control over the choices we make, a sense of meaning in our lives, and positive connections and relationships with the people around us. If we decide what values are most important to us, and make choices that are aligned with those deeply felt priorities, we may not end up someplace fabulous. But we will be at peace with our choices, and closer to a life of meaning and connection—and therefore happiness—than any fabulous, external “success” can bestow. It’s a different kind of joy than what we normally imagine, but there is still joy in knowing we’ve served our hearts and humanity well.
And even though I’ve never met her, or had the fun of a dinner conversation with her, I think Krista Tippett would agree wholeheartedly with that.
