Nath (the philosophical friend of ours) wrote about a “calling” being one reason for moving back to Utah from Seattle. I’m not sure what he meant by that and he didn’t clarify.
For me a calling isn’t something profound you get from a religious experience but simply what you get when you recognize who you are as a puzzle piece in the larger things happening around you. When you don’t find that spot or find that your puzzle piece doesn’t really fit anywhere you might feel life isn’t worthwhile.
You might also just have oversized expectations for meaning. This life has meager offerings and the religious narratives many of us were raised with no longer provide a whole lot when you can no longer personally take them seriously.
The meager offerings life provides are a context you’re born into and your genetics. Using these you can derive a lot of things about what you should do with your life. This is probably why I don’t feel like I lack direction though figuring out what to do may take some discovery.
Secondarily, if I look to what life aspires toward and give myself those things (food, shelter, exercise, health, growth, yada), I can take a sort of side path to give myself meaning. What does a body need? I better give body that stuff. Feeling like shit? probably better sleep on it.
The larger sense of meaning that many religious narratives seem to provide is something like your whole life being one big video game created specifically for you. In this video game every choice is uniquely designed for you and even if things don’t seem to make sense, in the end there’s a video game creator who will give you justice.
Even if some version of the video game narrative were true I don’t see how the “calling” would be a whole lot different. I’m mostly into pursuing the overlap between what you’re good at, what’s valuable to the world and what you find personally satisfying (assuming there is something in that space). All other routes including good for good’s sake, rationalistic pursuit of the good (or whatever) seem to have negative surprises along the path (ressentiment).
In any case, I know of no sense of meaning that can’t be demolished in an instant. Viktor Frankl seems to think there’s something special about how we endure suffering. I have a lot of respect for the guy but I’m brought back to Hölderlin:
“We speak of our hearts, of our plans, as if they were ours; yet there is a power outside of us that tosses us here and there as it pleases until it lays us in the grave, and of which we know not where it comes nor where it is bound.
We want to grow upward, and spread wide our branches and twigs, yet soil and weather bring us to whatever is to be, and when the lightning strikes your crown and splits you to the roots, poor tree! What part have you in it?”
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