Blog 1629 – 03.06.2020

“The Callings”

NBC has a popular Monday night program in its second season called Manifest. It is about a plane load of people who were flying back to New York City from Jamaica and the plane was presumed lost only to miraculously land five and a half years later. No time has lapsed for those on the plane but time has gone on for everyone else and the passengers find a vastly different world awaiting them.

In addition to parents and partners having died or moved on, the surviving passengers begin to hear “callings” words of instruction in their own voices, in their own heads, advising them to do this or to do that, usually involving important matters that need attending to for theirs and or the well-being of others. As you might imagine there is a quite a large amount of drama and some trauma as the various scenarios unfold.

We have all seen or read stories about people who hear voices and in most if not all of those stories those people end up in insane asylums, imprisoned for following those voices, or dead by their own hands or those of police officers trying to prevent crimes. I heard a funny man once say that he heard some serial killers say that they heard voices telling them to kill but the only voices he ever heard came from the refrigerator or food pantry saying, “Eat me.”

I confess, I too, have heard a calling or many from juicy cheese burgers, steaks, cookies, cakes, and other tasty delights reminiscent of the past Burger King campaign, “Aren’t you hungry?”

Do not discount the possibility of true callings to greatness, service, and greater happiness. Often our own thoughts we can hear, if we listen carefully, and in our own voice. And thoughts are always like that proverbial fork in the road, just choices. Like the Indigo Girls song, Watershed, a favorite of mine: “You can stand there and agonize till agony is your heaviest load. You’ll never fly as the crow flies, get used to a country mile, if you willing to face, the choice at your face, every choice is worth your while.” Or as my friend Mike Dooley says, “Thoughts become things. Choose the good ones.” They are not so much good or bad as different. We choose what appeals to us.

If you really believe this one life is all their is, I suppose I can understand the pressure, the fear of choosing a path you might later regret. As I tell people regarding my habit of missing an intended turn now and again or on purpose taking a different one, some of my most fascinating adventures begin that way and even after a few miles going one way, I can if I wish decide to double back, and that is fine too, for this wonderful truck of mine and even more wonderful heart can stop on a dime and turn right around whenever I choose it to.

There are so many strange and wonderful callings, enough requiring many lifetimes, I think, to answer even a few, let alone all of them. Listen up, Pilgrim, you’ve been causing a lot of trouble in this parts, maybe it’s time you moved on. Happy trails to you, until we meet again. The callings, the choices, are yours.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White