“Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies,” wrote Albert Camus. … We have to realize that a vocation is not something we find, it’s something we grow — and grow into.

It is common to think of a vocation as a career that you somehow feel you were “meant to do.” I prefer a different definition, one closer to the historical origins of the concept: a vocation is a career that not only gives you fulfillment — meaning, flow, freedom — but that also has a definitive goal or a clear purpose to strive for attached to it, which drives your life and motivates you to get up in the morning.

Marie Curie never had [a] miraculous moment of insight, when she knew that she must dedicate her working life to researching the properties of radioactive materials. What really occurred was that this goal quietly crept up on her during years of sustained scientific research. … Her obsession grew in stages, without any Tannoy announcement from the heavens that issued her a calling. That’s the way it typically happens: although people occasionally have those explosive epiphanies, more commonly a vocation crystallizes slowly, almost without us realizing it.

So there is no great mystery behind it all. If we want a job that is also a vocation, we should not passively wait around for it to appear out of thin air. Instead we should take action and endeavor to grow it like Marie Curie. How? Simply by devoting ourselves to work that gives us deep fulfillment through meaning, flow and freedom. … Over time, a tangible and inspiring goal may quietly germinate, grow larger, and eventually flower into life.

(Roman Krznaric, How to Find Fulfilling Work)

Margarita Georgiadis - Landscapes, 2009 - oil on canvas

(via journalofanobody)

“In a groundbreaking move that has already prompted a fierce backlash from psychiatrists, the British Psychological Society’s division of clinical psychology (DCP) will on Monday issue a statement declaring that, given the lack of evidence, it is time for a “paradigm shift” in how the issues of mental health are understood. The statement effectively casts doubt on psychiatry’s predominantly biomedical model of mental distress – the idea that people are suffering from illnesses that are treatable by doctors using drugs. The DCP said its decision to speak out “reflects fundamental concerns about the development, personal impact and core assumptions of the (diagnosis) systems”, used by psychiatry. Dr Lucy Johnstone, a consultant clinical psychologist who helped draw up the DCP’s statement, said it was unhelpful to see mental health issues as illnesses with biological causes. “On the contrary, there is now overwhelming evidence that people break down as a result of a complex mix of social and psychological circumstances – bereavement and loss, poverty and discrimination, trauma and abuse,” Johnstone said.”

Psychiatrists under fire in mental health battle

(via aheartwithmanygenders)

America take rest
I was born No poet
Born laces to television archaic computer lemming games
Walmart target home depot banks 

Big man take rest
I was born No lover
Born sage-less wise cracker
Abandoned lot mower for petrified native broken horn blowers

Savage take rest
I was born No tin man tight vested slave author
Born on No Puritanical pilgrimage not Lord wrought No Kings vestige 

Youth take rest
I was born a silver-tongued tight fisted counter daughter
Fire starting ageist hippy
Empty gun waving barbiturate sipping
Anti- nun

I take rest
I was born No fool

Sade Johnson, Less Fear (via HONY)