on our lives. Our national myth is about the endless defiance
of limits: opening the western frontier, breaking the speed of
sound, dropping people on the moon, discovering
"cyberspace" at the very moment when we have filled old-
fashioned space with so much junk that we can barely
move. We refuse to take no for an answer.
Part of me treasures the hopefulness of this American
legacy. But when I consistently refuse to take no for an
answer, I miss the vital clues to my identity that arise when
way closes-and I am more likely both to exceed my limits
and to do harm to others in the process.
A few years ago, I was introduced at a conference as a
"recovering sociologist." The line got a good laugh, but it
also snapped me back to my ignominious failure in the
summer before I began graduate school. My sou] needed to
recover from the misfit between sociology and itself. But
before that could happen, my ego needed to deal with its
shame. I had to get through graduate school and prove,
however briefly, that I could succeed as a professor of
sociology-even though that path took me directly into
vocational despair.
The despair that took me from teaching sociology at
Georgetown to the community at Pendle Hill contained a
call to vocational integrity. Had I not followed my despair,
and had Ruth not helped me understand it, I might have
continued to pursue a work that was not mine to do, causing
further harm to myself, to the people and projects with