A record 3.3 million Americans filed claims for unemployment last week. And in a country (or a metro area like DC) that so self-identifies with and obsesses over work, the loss of any job is always a harsh wake up call, no matter what the circumstances.

As someone who works on a project by project basis, I know this feeling all too well. Even though I’m more accustomed to in-between times than a salaried worker, any loss of employment can be an even more galling reminder that you still weren’t even doing the work you really wanted to be doing in the first place, and that now you don’t even have that less desirable but paying option. However, during this time of involuntary unemployment, maybe we can make it our time to work towards our first choices.

Part of this blog may be to commit to exploring this area in the hopes that it might help myself as well as others. I have bought a lot of “career advice” books that just haven’t cut it for me and I’m not sure why. My best guess, after all this time, as to why that is, is that the job that I want doesn’t yet exist. None of the standard pre-cut options seem to work for me or appeal to me, for one reason or another. So I may have to create my own job. Or my own business. And maybe you will too.

So I thought I’d start with one of the most popular books related to this topic, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren (you can support this blog by buying his book using the hardcover link or this paperback link!). I bought this book as a starting point to think about my career problems but the book’s goals are bigger than that. Following the suicide of his son in 2013, after years of quiet family struggle, I think this book may have actually been a father’s response to his son’s fight against mental illness, depression, and suicidal thoughts.

Day 1 of his book starts with the sentence, “It’s not about you.” Which might be startling to someone looking for comfort to boost their self-worth in a time of hurt and disappointment, but it is the right shift in mindset to make. Not only because being in pain makes you automatically self-focused, but not thinking of yourself also gets you out of selfish thoughts, self-doubts, and self-pity, and it directs your focus outward, to where your doubts can be answered.

Having been a Christian for several years at the time I first read his book about 15 years ago (I have more recently become a convert to Catholicism), I agreed with Rick Warren – that my life was and is about God and not about me. And about His purposes for my life. However, it didn’t really help me clarify what God’s purposes were for me *specifically* versus just being a good Christian generally, which is most of what the book talks about, reading more like an extended but structured, introductory Protestant megachurch sermon. However, The Purpose Driven Life does help by connecting purpose to the things outside of us – God, family and community.

So, on the one hand, I was disappointed when I reached the end of the book, since it didn’t clarify anything more to me about my career search. No, I did not read it one chapter a day as suggested. But I doubt that would have made a difference, especially given other resources I found later.

On the other hand, I probably wouldn’t have felt as compelled to continue to investigate *God’s* purposes and works for my life, rather than *my own*, alongside my career search, if I hadn’t read The Purpose Driven Life, which most recently culminated in my attending the Catherine of Siena Institute’s Called and Gifted workshop and truly finding (the beginnings of) the works that God had made for me to do. But more on that in another post.

Having said that, I would like to cite the Catechism of the Catholic Church here (2428), “Work is for man, not man for work.²¹³” So I mean that to say that work was created for me in the sense that it was created for my benefit. Not because I was or am necessary for the work to be performed. And the work is not more important than me and the state of my soul. But graces don’t have anything to do with me, outside of my receptivity to them. If I say no to God, I have no doubt the graces of purpose and work can and should be given to someone else. Work is a duty, but I also believe, a grace from God. To quote the rest of 2428: “In work, the person exercises and fulfills in part the potential inscribed in his nature. the primordial value of labor stems from man himself, its author and its beneficiary.”

In short, if you need to step back from your day to day worries and really reconnect with the bigger picture of life, I recommend reading this book. But if you are looking for a more immediately practical help, it may not be what you are looking for. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It may very well be the book you need to get you to where you ultimately need to go in this life and the next.

#sars-cov-2 #coronavirus #unemployment #purposedrivenlife #work #job #career