We live in a culture that places a high premium on having a job that we not just like, but feel passionate about. For example, as a kid, I got asked “what do you want to be when you grow up?” so often, that the answer I gave (a writer) began to merge with my identity. As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve realized that while a career can be an important part of some people’s identities, this isn’t true for everyone. For these other people, a career is a means of making their life– their true community and passions– work. My parents represent opposite ends of this spectrum. Over the years, watching my parents and their very different relationships to their careers has taught me that neither way of relating to one’s job is inherently better or worse. However, I’ve learned that how you view your career can have a big effect on your lifestyle in general. Most importantly, I’ve learned that in the end, for both my parents, coming to an understanding of what their livelihood meant to them took a long, gnarled path with plenty of change and self-discovery.

I’ll start with my mum. After studying culinary science at University of Bath, she moved to the US to study and teach Yoga in Berkeley while holding a full time job as a nanny. Later, she went back to university to study anatomy and physiology, thinking she might become an occupational therapist. For a while, she taught kindergarten, but now she is a successful real estate agent. Basically, she’s tried everything. However, the idea of a calling, or a passion, or even a dream job has never resonated with her. In each of these jobs, she’s had a nagging feeling that there might be another career, a better fit, out there waiting for her. At the same time, each of these careers has impacted her life in one profound way: through the people she interacts with.

You see, my mum is still good friends with the little girls she nannied 25 years ago. Her former kindergarten students hug her when they see her in the grocery store, although many of them are in high school by now. And today, she is not only best friends with her business partner, but constantly makes friends with her clients, making them feel welcome as newcomers in our community not as a business tactic but because she genuinely loves them. My mum’s career is there to support a life lived well. She hikes and mountain bikes every single day, still practices yoga, has a rich spiritual life, and cooks huge, rich meals for boisterous dinner parties with all the friends she’s made. My mum views her career is something peripheral, though necessary, to life. She doesn’t love the business itself, or feel a sense of passion or purpose within it, but that’s not the point for her. Instead, real estate is a source of income that allows her to live a full life and  cultivate a beautiful community.

In contrast, my dad’s career is, aside from his family, the center of his life, his project, and his passion, sometimes bordering on obsession. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who loves their job more. But let me back up a little.

My dad played classical violin his entire childhood. His family is a musical bunch- my grandma was an opera singer and piano teacher who wanted her family to be like the Von Trapps, but with string instruments. My dad spent a long time searching for that one career that would be his passion. An economics major, he was driven by ambition. However, my parents settled in a small rural town, and he ended up working for the local public radio station. It was a flexible job that let him be an active and present dad, and when I was in elementary school, he started coming into my classroom to teach violin, and even taught a few lessons out of our house. This side gig grew slowly over the years, and as my dad became bored with his other job, he began to put more and more time into developing a teaching philosophy and taking on new students. Finally, he quit his day-job completely. Today my dad is a popular fiddle teacher who has developed his own curriculum to make music fun for young children. He has to turn away students constantly. He has a business selling his cute and innovative online fiddle curriculum to teachers across the country.

This career has become my dad’s calling. When my dad isn’t teaching lessons, he’s taking students out to the pizza to celebrate learning a complicated new piece, or leading a fiddle jam at the local grill, having potlucks at the homes of his students, teaching parents guitar so they can practice with their kids, driving his older students to Fiddle Camps across the west coast, developing new curriculum, running webinars for other teachers, brainstorming ideas for the website… I could go on. And he loves every minute of it. To my dad, making music fun and exciting, turning it into a community-building activity, is his life’s work.

My dad’s music business is his life. It ranks up there with family for him. This is a key difference between him and my mom, who sees work as something to support her life. She wants to travel, build community outside of work, and have adventures. Although the two of them are polar opposites in this respect, they are perfectly compatible. Like yin and yang, they balance each other out.
My parents have helped me understand what it means to search for a career. I have learned that the process can be long and convoluted, and that you don’t necessarily work in the same field as your college major. I have learned that sometimes a career helps cultivate a life, and sometimes it is your life, but that I can’t really go wrong with either philosophy. And I have learned that at the core of a healthy career and life is community.