Through how very many situ­ations does human life pass? We are born, we love and we die, they say. But what silt the cur­rent of life sweeps along depends on us as well. How we fill the short time we walk here on Earth is, after all, largely in our own hands.

It is an often-repeated tenet, almost a spir­itu­al com­mon­place, that life is noth­ing but a task. Fate as a chance, life as a task… but what is the human voca­tion? A task revealed in human rela­tion­ships? Or a role allot­ted to us by the uni­verse? How far does man choose the ideas by which he lives, and how far does the idea choose the man? Oppor­tun­ity makes the thief, as the say­ing goes – but does oppor­tun­ity not also make the hero, the fath­er, moth­er, child, lover, mar­tyr, win­ner and loser?

We can under­stand voca­tion on two levels: as a worldly call­ing, when voca­tion appears as a pro­fes­sion, and as the pull of some idea, when it is labelled a sense of mis­sion. The basic roles of life, a chosen path, a career in the good sense of the word, suc­cess – above all suc­cess that is shared with oth­ers and serves oth­ers – most cer­tainly are pos­it­ive human pos­sib­il­it­ies. True voca­tion is not con­tent with our becom­ing decent offi­cials and clerks in life, but demands more – sac­ri­fice, self-sac­ri­fice. We can speak of true voca­tion when a man's mis­sion and pas­sion, his voca­tion and his delight, coin­cide, that is, when he is able to ful­fil his tasks in life with true joy and con­vic­tion. One can­not preach hap­pi­ness with a sour face.

The key word in authen­ti­city is con­tent­ment. The authen­t­ic moth­er is happy among her chil­dren, happy in her role at home. The authen­t­ic artist shows the world filtered through him­self, through his own con­scious­ness – as he sees it, and he does not slav­ishly seek to serve the fash­ion­able taste of the moment. The authen­t­ic man can leave false ideals of man­hood behind him and, as a human being of mature, fully real­ised spir­itu­al­ity, is cap­able of cre­at­ive work, of cre­ation. These are clas­sic voca­tions in life: to be a man, to be a woman, to be an artist. In his worldly voca­tion too, con­tent­ment must accom­pany a man's deeds, and then he can fill his role authen­tic­ally.

Unlike worldly voca­tion, the sense of mis­sion, as the response to the pull of an idea, has by now taken on a plainly pejor­at­ive col­our­ing, per­haps not by chance. The sense of mis­sion has often become a syn­onym for the will to pre­vail against oth­ers, the close kin of blind zeal, of fan­at­icism. Through his dis­tor­ted sense of mis­sion a man gen­er­ally seeks not to bet­ter him­self but to change oth­ers, not to prac­tise self-cri­ti­cism but to scourge oth­ers. Instead of free­dom of the spir­it, he becomes the mono­ma­ni­ac­al slave of one idea or anoth­er, and instead of the mod­esty and humil­ity that authen­t­ic spir­itu­al growth requires, he strives to redeem the world, and believes him­self the pos­sessor of final truths, the cus­todi­an of the sole meth­od of sal­va­tion. But one must become the slave of the supreme ideal, the Abso­lute Truth, not the slave of dog­mas and rules.

Does the pro­fes­sion­al voca­tion-role really give com­plete ful­fil­ment? Is the work-career enough, enriched with some spir­itu­al sur­plus? Or should we make our peace with life being con­stant trans­form­a­tion, a shap­ing, a kind of dynam­ic life task? Are we called, per­haps, to know the truth? But truth has never yet made any­one happy! Truth is not com­fort­able, and there is more bur­den in it than light­ness. Even without romantic over­tones, may we declare that the highest voca­tion is the prac­tice of love? Pon­der well what is tran­si­ent and what is last­ing. It is not even a ques­tion: boldly cast away the tran­si­ent, and if you must choose, stand by the last­ing. The bridge between truth and love is cour­age.