He had lived alone all his adult life, in a vacuum. He had contributed to the sum of human knowledge; that was his vocation, it was the way he had found to express his talents; but love was something he had never known.
Atomised
Michel Houellebecq
Category: VOCATION
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‘I’m useless,’ said Bruno resignedly. ‘I couldn’t breed pigs, I don’t have the faintest idea how to make sausages or forks or mobile phones. I’m surrounded by all this stuff that I eat or use and I couldn’t actually make a single thing; I couldn’t even begin to understand how they’re made. If industrial production ceased tomorrow, if all the engineers and the specialist technicians disappeared off the face of the earth, I couldn’t do anything to start things off again. In fact, outside the industrialised world, I couldn’t even survive; I wouldn’t know how to feed or clothe myself, or protect myself from the weather — my technical competence falls far short of Neanderthal man. I’m completely dependent on my society, but I play no useful role in it. The only thing I know how to do is write dubious articles on outdated cultural issues. I get paid for it, too – well paid for it – much more than the average wage.’
Atomised
Michel Houellebecq -
People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation.
—Marie-Louise von Franz -
The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical, or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities.
The artist who never makes art becomes cynical about those who do.
The lover who never risks loving mocks romance.
The thinker who never commits to a philosophy sneers at belief itself.
And yet, all of them suffer, because deep down they know: the life they mock is the life they were meant to live.
attributed to Carl Jung
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“A common misconception in people early in their vocation is that they think they should be capable of the work before they’ve done it—when it is doing the work that creates the individual that is capable of it.”
— WE REACH OUR IDEALS THROUGH THE WORK, JOEL UILI -
No one can be fully known to the world, regardless of his/her accomplishments and even when the accomplishments are prominent, the soul remains unknown. Although we are insignificant, we still have an inner realization that we are extremely valuable. In reality, this self-realization can only be known through God. The self searches for validation and waits to be fully known. This cannot be achieved in the world.
The Lord’s Prayer
Fr. Mina Dimitri -
Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. Young people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together.
Work
Hugh Black -
The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not those who belong to the “more perfect state,” but those who love and suffer most. This is why they can move ahead of so many others whose lives, apparently, were more successful.
VIRGINITY
A Positive Approach to Celibacy for the Sake of the Kingdom of Heaven
Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap -
the man who is born with enough to live upon is generally of a somewhat independent turn of mind; he is accustomed to keep his head up; he has not learned all the arts of the beggar; perhaps he even presumes a little upon the possession of talents which, as he ought to know, can never compete with cringing mediocrity; in the long run he comes to recognize the inferiority of those who are placed over his head, and when they try to put insults upon him, he becomes refractory and shy. This is not the way to get on in the world.
The Wisdom of Life
Arthur Schopenhauer -
The only thing that stands in our power to achieve, is to make the most advantageous use possible of the personal qualities we possess, and accordingly to follow such pursuits only as will call them into play, to strive after the kind of perfection of which they admit and to avoid every other; consequently, to choose the position, occupation and manner of life which are most suitable for their development.
…Imagine a man endowed with herculean strength who is compelled by circumstances to follow a sedentary occupation, some minute exquisite work of the hands, for example, or to engage in study and mental labor demanding quite other powers, and just those which he has not got—compelled, that is, to leave unused the powers in which he is pre-eminently strong; a man placed like this will never feel happy all his life through.
The Wisdom of Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
