Part 1: Was I ever lost?

What do you do when you want to be a fireman? You dream of saving people from burning buildings. But then you try for training, see the blood and guts of car wreck victims, and it loses its appeal. So you drop out? It’s a soul-crushing experience if that’s what was in your sights for years.

Can we ever regain that desire to be a hero or be a famous singer? Would we be happy with that life or get disillusioned?

Even billionaire singer Taylor Swift has disillusioning moments. She felt stripped of her life’s work when her music catalog was sold. She’s disillusioned with the constant pressure to be perfect and the relentless public judgment. In her recent music, she contrasts the polished, perfect image of a showgirl with the challenging reality of life away from the spotlight.

Even when we get what we think we want, we find ourselves disappointed. This isn’t a new problem. The Bible speaks to us about it.

Unfulfilling Success. Images by Veo from suggestions by Dorian Scott Cole — **Unfulfilling Success.** Images by Veo from suggestions by Dorian Scott Cole

Matthew Chapter 25 speaks to us about the Kingdom of Heaven, which is here, now, and forever. It tells us much about how to live our lives. It tells us to be alert to what is spiritually significant in our lives (which can be nearly everything). Then, the parable of the talents tells us to use what we have been given (our aptitudes) and more will be given to us, or else we will be diminished. And then, it tells us the people who will be in heaven are those who met the needs of the poor and imprisoned.

Be careful what you want

For many people, the quest of getting what you want can be more fulfilling than actually achieving it because the journey involves purpose, growth, and satisfaction. The process of working towards a goal provides a sense of motivation, pride, and meaning, which can be more sustainable than the fleeting happiness that sometimes follows a successful outcome. The anticipation and pursuit itself are key to fulfillment, while getting the item can lead to a drop in motivation and a new, unfulfilled desire.

When I was a six year old in the 1950s I told someone I was going to be an electronic technician. I don’t know how I knew the word. In my grade school days I wanted to be in radio and a writer. Sometimes I would sit up at night writing down the news that came over the radio, pretending to create a newscast. I “spun records” in our barn. In high school I entered speech contests.

I made it into radio. I quickly learned the ropes. Soon I got my own show, the morning show and a late afternoon rock show—the first rock show on that station. It built confidence, which I needed. Then I became disillusioned. The situation changed, and I was relegated to the late afternoon plus the evening FM slot broadcasting Cardinals Baseball.

I hate baseball. I often worked until midnight and then had to sign on the stations at six AM. Tired all the time, I felt my voice needed improvement and couldn’t get any help with it. Fame meant nothing to me. The money I made wasn’t mine to spend, and I couldn’t even buy a Coke most of the time. Unlike “helping people” work, you spend your time speaking into a microphone for people you can’t even imagine. Disillusioned, I quit. Went in the Navy.

The Navy saw I knew radio and had technical aptitude. You get technical aptitude working on a farm. I had a little interest in ham radio in high school but just couldn’t get into it. I doubted electronics was for me. In the Navy, I learned to design transmitters and receivers. At that time, if you were on a ship in the middle of the ocean and it was attacked by torpedoes and planes—knocking out your radio transmitter antenna, damaging your transmitter, and your engine, leaving you dead in the water and isolated, and taking on water—who do you want to fix it? Someone who can design, or someone who can only replace parts? We were known outside the Navy as “field engineers.”

Was I happy? It was okay for a while, although I was often bored, and after leaving the Navy I continued doing technical work. I was only happy with it when I had a difficult problem to solve or had to design something. I’ve done a lot of other technical work.

What I learned from my careers is that I like a challenge, creativity, variety, communication, and helping others. These were important to know in my future careers. I learned that I can do a lot of different things, and was happy as long as these elements were present. If they were absent, I was bored. I took several electrical engineering courses and was bored.

Then I learned the most important thing, and that is to challenge myself. You have to put yourself into your work and find challenges. There are usually ways to improve the work you do if you can think about it and make changes.

I still do “technical” work, even in retirement, although mostly what I do is communications. But I recently developed two patents: one for datacenter waste heat reuse and another on computer architecture that speeds up computers by 1,000 to 10,000 times. It was a fun, creative challenge that also required persistence and thinking outside of the box. (My patents). I don’t want to do it every day.

The technical career I liked best was in artificial intelligence (AI).

Find yourself in love (serving others)

I’ve been a manager and a pastor, as well as have a family that still seems to need me and whom I love. Leaving management and pastoring was much harder for me than leaving technical jobs.

From my youngest days, I found what I really liked best was helping others. It really pleases me to make my wife coffee and see her smile. Or see my adult children and grandchildren smile.

Our purpose in life

I don’t have inside knowledge on why any individual is here. Meaning and purpose are as elusive as trying to put your finger on a drop of mercury—it just slips away. Yet we all have profound feelings when we know something is right for us. There may be many things that work for us, and as we grow, these things can change and evolve.

I believe we are all expected to use the talents and aptitudes that we have. Don’t hide them. Use them. Sing for others. Throw water on fires before they grow. Bring someone coffee. Help someone move. Say kind words to people. Give out smiles like hotcakes at a picnic. Sit with someone who is hurting and listen. Give to the poor. Suggest ways of approaching problems when someone asks. Redesign datacenters so they don’t harm the environment. Help someone rebuild their porch. Help someone create their Halloween costume. Help the elderly. Babysit for a friend so they can go out for a night of fun.

Conclusion

There are times we need to get away from the rat race and get in touch with ourselves again, to try to understand what makes us feel fulfilled. There are times when we simply need to look within and develop the aptitudes we have. There are experiences that teach us that maybe it’s less about the career and more about the opportunities for challenge, creativity, variety, communication, putting yourself into the work, and helping others. There are times we just need to look outside of ourselves, see the people around us and their needs, and realize that’s where we fit. That’s where we need to be.