One Saturday early morning, after dropping my wife Esther at her work on Burrard St. in downtown Vancouver, I headed to the nearby Thierry coffee shop. As part of my Saturday morning routine, I ordered an americano and French croissant and was enjoying the time of reading and reflecting for the day. That morning, I heard one lady across the table talking to her friend, saying, “I don’t know who I am, and I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. And I don’t know where I’m going with my career. Right now, I am just working for money. Isn’t this what everyone does? Right?”
From this conversation, I could sense that the lady was asking the deeper existential question of who she is. She was longing for her vocation. What she does, which springs from who she is, deeply matters. It is something more than a paycheck, something that makes coherent sense of who she is in the world. Could it be possible that our vocations—what we do—and our beliefs about who we are, why we are, and what the world is, can make coherent sense in the world in which we live and work today?
I remember the year 2010 when I was graduating from the University of Washington in Seattle and asking my own existential and vocational questions: “Who am I? Why am I? What am I supposed to do with my life?” At that time, I was a student of political science and economics and was interested in pursuing careers in law, business, and investment. But having grown up in a traditional Korean Christian background, I was taught everything in the world is evil and all about money. I reasoned that as a Christian, I must be detached from the world of the secular realm and thus choose a profession that is holier, in the sacred realm. So, without really knowing who I was and what I was supposed to do, I went to study at seminary to become a pastor, because I thought that’s what a serious Christian was supposed to do.
Whether we are conscious of it or not, we live out of stories that we believe to be true. I remember visiting Disneyland in Los Angeles with Esther in 2020. Entering the theme park, we were reminded of and surrounded by our childhood stories—Aladdin, The Jungle Book, The Lion King, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and many more—all coming to life. Immersed in the world of stories, we felt that we were stepping back into our childhood dreams, once again breathing and walking in and out of the stories of our early years. The stories of our lives and the world deeply shape the way we perceive and interpret our reality, and deeply influence the paths of our lives and vocations. remember leaving Disneyland, the world of stories, pondering, “What stories of the world am I part of?” and “What is the truest story of the world that tells who I am and what I am supposed to do with my life and vocation?”
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