Meaningful Work: A Quest to Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, and Feed Your Soul

Before we’ve looked it in the eye, our own sorrow is like the dragon hiding in the cave. Think of yourself as on the hero’s journey to face the dragon. It takes hard work to locate it, and courage to enter its cave.

This is the great paradox, the mystery: when you immerse yourself in serving others wholeheartedly you find yourself, along with many answers to the “what next” questions you’ve been seeking.

the best book written on the subject of personal vocation: Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer.

“From the depths of my sorrow please reveal a place where I might serve someone who needs me.”

the novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said: “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”

While anything’s possible, I don’t think the answer to this question will be written in the sky. Therefore, I think it’s important to ponder these questions without expecting a big answer. Socrates famously said, “There is no solution; seek it lovingly.”

A dentist wrote me recently after reading a commencement speech I gave at Mizzou.

Askinosie Chocolate is my vocation and it’s the only reason we’re able to do what we do.

He and the others admonished me: “Don’t talk to your dad about death. It is a sign of weakness and Jesus won’t heal him if you have such doubt.” So we didn’t discuss it. My dad would try to talk to me, but I would say, “Dad we can’t talk about it or you won’t be healed.”