Desires, Dreams and Destiny

We see a lot of advice these days about following your passion. Determine what your passion is, pursue it, and you will find happiness. Huffington Post even has a whole section on the subject. It ‘s a subject usually but not always associated with “Gen Y” or millennials – those who were born roughly between 1980 and 1995. Yet I’ve heard Gen X-rs and Baby Boomers embrace the same idea. It’s usually tied in with the idea of quitting your existing job and pursing that desire or dream that’s been rattling around in your head.

However the idea got started, the inevitable pushback has followed. “Follow Your Passion is Not a Career Plan,” says Business Week. George Washington University professor Cal Newport says it’s bad advice. Mashable reposted the Cal Newport video and then elaborated on why it’s bad advice. So did the Minimalists. So did Fast Company. (That Cal Newport fellow has had a considerable influence.)

The appeal of the idea of following your passion is understandable. You find yourself in a boring job, or a job that’s taken turns you didn’t expect, or the organization reorganized itself three months after you walked in the door, or that great new boss you were working for suddenly quit, or the company was acquired and layoffs are coming. Or perhaps the layoffs have started. None of this leads to happiness, and it is happiness that has come to be the main goal of life in Western culture.

What I think we do is confuse passion with desire, or even dreams.

I have a great desire to spend more time in London, seeing cool stuff, like we did on our recent vacation, and preferably staying at the hotel we stayed at. It’s a desire – and a quick way to spend a lot of money.

I have a dream of being a full-time writer, writing what I would like to write. It’s been a dream since I was in my 20s (it’s an old dream). I didn’t begin getting really serious about it until about 10 years ago. Yes, I’ve authored two novels and a book about the poetry of work. I won’t be living off the royalties any time soon. The dream is still a dream, and one that I believe I’ll be closer to realizing in a few short months, when I retire from the day job.

Ideally though, you never quite realize the dream. You keep reaching for it. The reality of the dream is in the reaching.

And then, say John Lynch, Bruce McNichol and Bill Thrall, the authors of The Cure: What if God Isn’t Who You Think He Is and Neither Are You, there is destiny.

Their definition isn’t what you might expect. Most of us today would define destiny as fate or perhaps providence. What The Cure suggests, however, is that we typically look at this from the wrong end of the telescope.

“Destiny,” the authors write, “is the ordained intention God has sacredly prepared with your name on it.”

That’s the desire we should have, the dream we should reach for, and even the passion we should follow.

Yes, it’s about you, but it doesn’t start with you.

And it won’t end with you.

But you do have a destiny.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Cure. To see more posts on this chapter, “Two Destinies,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines and Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by Anne Lowe via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

A Desire to Write

I don’t exactly when I decided that writing would be a significant part of my life. But it was later than one might think. A lot later.

It wasn’t when I was a child, even though, when I was 10, my father brought home a blank-sheeted book he had bound at his printing business – for me to write a story. But it was largely because I was a voracious reader, and he thought I could write my own story. I did, or at least part of a story, a mystery, about a kids who discover that a grandfather clock hides a tunnel. (That’s all I remember about it.)

It wasn’t in high school, even though my favorite subject was English, and even though I has discovered Twain, Dickens, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Frost, T.S. Eliot, and so many other writers and poets.

When I started college, I was in a pre-med curriculum, and that lasted all of two semesters. By the end of my freshman year, I had already taken two semesters of life sciences and two semesters of chemistry. And I had another 13 hours of chemistry to go. Since Glynn + chemistry = total misery, it was time to rethink what I wanted to study. I ended up in journalism because I knew I could write, and because I wasn’t going to lose any course credits.

What I didn’t know how to do was type, and typing was a requirement to enter the Journalism School. So the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I taught myself to type. Imperfectly. But adequately enough to get into journalism.

But as odd as this might sound, I didn’t think of journalism as writing. And I spent less than a year working for a newspaper before going to work in corporate communications.

It was in 1975 and 1976 that the idea of writing began to enter my head, writing apart from what I did at work. And it happened, I think, because I was unceremoniously pushed into speechwriting. I liked it; in fact, it is still what I consider the best part of all corporate communications work – the best and the most difficult. Speechwriting requires you to write stories to be told aloud, stories for people to hear as opposed to stories for people to read. And that requires work in understanding storytelling, rhetoric, language, and humor (among a lot of other things). It’s no surprise that most communications people don’t like speechwriting.

But I did. Speechwriting also led me back to poetry. From 1976 to 2006, I had many kinds of jobs and responsibilities, and speechwriting was always part of every one of them.

An interesting thing about speechwriting is that speechwriters do stand in the shadows. Someone else will get credit for their best work (and blame for their worst). In a very real and sometimes profound way, I was striving to do my best work for someone else.

In A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Made to Live, author Emily Freeman says something as simple as it’s profound: “I don’t believe there is one great thing I was made to do in this world. I believe there is one great God I was made to glorify. And there will be many ways, even a million little ways, I will declare his glory with my life.”

Freeman goes on to discuss why desires are put in our hearts, desires like a desire for writing. It’s not so that we can excel and become famous authors, receive honorary degrees and awards, and speak and be lionized at writing conferences.

I don’t believe I am “called” to write. I do believe that my heart has the desire to write, but not because I have wonderful stories to tell.

No, like speechwriting, my desire to write is defined by doing my best work, all my work, for someone else.

Over at TheHigh Calling, we’re discussing A Million Little Ways. Today’s discussion will be live at 2 p.m. Central time. Joinus, and find out what people have to say about desire.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.