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

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.”

What is the intersection of your talents, what the world needs, and your passion?

Kahlil Gibran wrote, “Our greatest joy is sorrow unmasked.” It took me twenty-five years to figure that out. Gibran understood that joy can be found, and if not found then cultivated, via a deep acknowledgment of our sorrows. He knew that the exploration of heartbreak—our own, and the world’s—leads to an expansive understanding of our true self. He

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

I started by volunteering in the palliative care department at Mercy Hospital in my hometown. I was still trying cases, and I usually made time to visit the hospital on Fridays. The director of the program would give me a list of patients who’d asked for a visit, most of whom were at the end of life in some stage of dying. The patients were all ove

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me a

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

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.

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