Repost: Finding Your Place in the Herd
Humans Have an Innate Drive to Belong and to Contribute - PURPOSEFULLY
Aloha! Welcome back! Last week I wrote about “Planning in Times of Change” and concluded that the key is to be clear about Purpose when Plans can be upended at any moment.
The kind of Purpose I am talking about is the underlying vocation or North Star that might, at a particular time or stage of life, find its fulfillment in paid work or in volunteering or in contributions to family or community or public life. This kind of Purpose is YOU - when you find it, you feel its warmth, even its fire, filling you with life. This essence of you can be understood as “Place” in the sense of your Place or role or kūlana in the larger human and non-human world.1
I have written about this at length before, so this week I am reposting an edited/excerpted version of a post from last May, just to get us all on the same page.
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I was well versed in the literature on finding purpose or calling when Zara and I arrived in a Hawaiʻi in 2005, optimistically thinking it would be easy to find our herd and our place in it. She had no choice in the relocation, of course. I had chosen to move at a good transition point when all my big consulting gigs were wrapping up, but I was not clear what my next “career move” would be. I was only certain that I was being called back to Hawaiʻi. And I had a profound moment of reinforcement of the connection between place and purpose as soon as I landed, as I shared in an earlier essay on “calling” or “personal mission.”
I had thought and read extensively about finding work that fulfilled a life purpose because I was trying to make meaning of my personal journey in the 1990s, the period about which I began writing this memoir.2 Articulating my conclusions to others in a grounded way became critical as I began to coach people and organizations in the early 2000s. How could I explain the value in a journey that had circled from working on Wall Street through a long pilgrimage to come back to consulting with only a felt sense - but not an articulation - of my own purpose or personal legend? I had the stories, many many teaching stories, but I needed to wrap them up neatly and tie a bow on the package. A colleague and I had created a company that was intended to guide executives in self-discovery, match them with meaningful, purpose-driven careers, and make sure they had the leadership and management skills to succeed. I needed to give my own journey credibility for which I could get paid!
Humans and animals alike long for connection, and can benefit from diversity in our herds.
During this time I continued to explore the idea of life purpose and contribution in conversation with a couple of diverse “herds.” The first herd, the one that had I had gathered or encountered during my recent journeys, was definitely eclectic. In contrast, I had the executives in the Wall Street Dialogues I was facilitating, leaders whose view of themselves and their world had been profoundly shaken by their experiences on September 11, 2001 and during the months that followed. One herd was all about intuition, following the omens, discovering oneʻs life purpose through the journey. The other herd, men and women, privileged backgrounds and hardscrabble rises, all had based their careers on an unquestioned assumption that their goal was individual achievement and success by standards of accumulating wealth and power, only to have all their ideas about leadership and value come tumbling down with the Twin Towers.
I knew the experiences I shared with the two herds were related, and that my own purpose was in that area where the two circles of the Venn diagram overlapped. The one conclusion that was consistent across my reading and discussion, was that oneʻs life purpose or vocation is defined in relationship with others, as opposed to oneʻs innate talents, learned skills, strengths and yearnings - the only things most vocational counselors or HR departments would focus on. During my first experience with Equine Guided Education Ariana explained how humans, horses and dogs share the same social system. Our co-evolution as species was based upon ways in which our collaboration was mutually beneficial. There appeared to be a biological basis for humanʻs powerful need for connection, for our inclination to define our place in a larger scheme of things.
My good friend and mentor The Reverend Fred Burnham, whom my readers met in my recollections of September 11th, invited me to design and lead the ongoing Trinity Wall Street Dialogues out of our shared interest in the implications of the “new sciences” like quantum physics and chaos theory versus the Newtonian “old sciences.” In our conversations about careers and life purpose, Fred introduced me to theologians who wrote powerfully on the topic of vocation. Parker Palmerʻs formulation is “Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.” Frederick Buechner put it this way: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
In our complex modern world, the essential expression of your divinely given mode of contribution can take a single clear course, or over time take many forms. It may or may not always be seen and valued publicly. But the takeaway is that your life purpose or calling or vocation only and always exists in relationship to others, to a herd.3
In indigenous thinking, as in a horse herd, every member of the collective has value. Every “job” and position is essential. Every member of the herd deserves to be protected and provided for. This is what is natural. Why else would we all have this inborn need to belong, this inborn desire to contribute?
I would love to hear your thoughts. How did you find your Purpose? How did you find your Place and Purpose?
I feel like Belonging is the most important thing I can be writing about at the moment. And Belonging is tied up with Purpose, Place, People and Power. More on this net week.
In an indigenous sensibility, your Place is also and always defined in relationship to geographical Place, whether birthplace or chosen place. I have chosen deliberately to use a word with multiple layers and interpretations.
A herd entails belonging - and if there is a metric for success it is found in reciprocity not in competition.
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Love this quote! ❤️❤️❤️