My Favorite Job – Vocation Or Mission?

Question: I have found my destiny exclusively in my work, which I really love. Tell me, am I going in the right direction? Could it be that I have found my calling but have lost my purpose?

Answer: Indeed, finding interesting work, really engaging and dissolving into it is a great joy. You have found your calling. In the past I also tried to find a job I loved that was appealing and satisfying, but I realized that it was meaningless. I remember how a scholar advised me to take a certain period in history like the Thirty Years’ War, for example, and delve into it and study it in depth.

– And then what?

– Then you will be an expert on the Thirty Years’ War if you dedicate your whole life to it.

As a big egoist, I thought it wasn’t worth spending my life on the Thirty Years’ War that occurred 400 years ago. The price seemed too high. Life goes by and a person develops and suddenly begins to realize that he has been engaging in something that is meaningless. Instead of the satisfaction and the enthusiasm a person felt before: “How interesting and what a success!”,  he suddenly feels emptiness, disappointment, and lack of energy, and this is terrible. Where have all the years gone? And for what? What should I look for now? He doesn’t have the same strength, desires, or possibilities as before. It turns out that a person shouldn’t engage too much in corporeal pleasures in this life, but rather choose what seems to be the greatest and the most important lasting value that is unchanging and above our lives.

Above our lives can only be eternity. This eternity is what we need to find and not waste time on trifles.

The question arises: Do I go for or not? If I agree, there can be no obstacles, only the attainment of eternity! This has to be a person’s standard since otherwise he lowers himself to the animal level.

Therefore, we need to engage in clarifying the level on which we attain eternity. It isn’t just eternity since there is no point existing on a corporeal level eternally. We don’t need such eternity. You can approach anyone on the street and ask whether he would like to live in this world forever. I doubt whether anyone would agree. It is only the beastly fear of death that forces us to live, but basically it is absolutely meaningless. This is the reason that everyone has to find out their ultimate purpose.

Question: But at the same time a person should have a profession?

Answer: Everyone should have a job so that he will be able to provide for himself normally and be useful, to engage in a job that he likes and not feel that he is wasting his time in vain. But at the same time, he has to make sure that every minute of his life is a small step toward the great goal, toward the attainment of eternity and perfection.
[170325]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/25/15