Mean
How do we take what we now know of portfolios and apply
this knowledge to our own journeys of vocation? Once we
have heard the call, answering is not enough. You have a
responsibility to not only do what you were born to do, but
to do it well.
For those who grew up on microwaves and prime-time
TV, the concept of craft is lost to us. We did not grow up
with an understanding of doing things with excellence; if it
was expedient and got the job done, then it was good
enough. In a world intent on following the path of least
resistance, the goal is expediency, not excellence. Doing
your work well is secondary to getting the job done. But
what if doing things quickly and easily wasn’t the point?
What if our work was meant to not only serve the world but
to make the worker better?
A writer was once asked by his well-meaning wife,
“Why don’t you write books people can read?” He wrote
odd, almost poetic stories that few people understood.
Dragging his family around Europe while he tried to make a
go at being an author, he was constantly plagued with
financial difficulties. To make matters worse, his
contemporaries criticized him for being nonsensical, even
outrageous, and sometimes perverse. And now, his wife was
joining the naysayers.
Such criticisms can wear on a person’s soul, but he kept