Elizabeth Ames
Prof. W. Scott Olsen
IWC 100
3 March 2023
The Sacrifice in Finding Life
What are you willing to risk for your vocation? Vocation is what a person feels called to do with their life. Sacrifice does not have to mean risking your life. It can include not starting a family, moving every few years, or struggling to keep friends. For some vocations, there is a risk of losing your life itself. It can take many people years, even most of their life, to find their true vocation. Others do not get to do it as their full-time job. The people who hear the call to pursue a particular path frequently sacrifice what many consider normal.
My vocation is to become an orchestra conductor. While I will probably never need to risk my life, most of my time will consist of traveling and long work hours where I would not be available for my family. I have already seen what I will likely sacrifice in my first year of college. When my friends go to parties, I work in a practice room, trying to learn scores. However, I have not regretted staying in and working. My life feels complete when I sit at a piano and look at the notes, trying to understand why a composer wrote it this way two-hundred years ago. For me, I am willing to give up almost anything for the pursuit of my vocation.
Lynsey Addario feels the same call and passion about conflict photography that I do for orchestra conducting. She is a conflict photojournalist for the New York Times. For the first decade of her career, she went around the Middle East and Africa, photographing the War on Terror, civil uprisings, injured civilians, and soldiers in the field. Addario’s memoir It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War shows her willingness to risk everything to follow her passion for conflict photography. During her assignments, she was kidnapped, psychologically tortured, shot at, and sacrificed what most people consider everyday life in the United States. Addario was willing and ready to give up her life for photography and the chance to help people tell their stories to the world. She knew being a photojournalist meant she could die, but Addario believed it was what she was called to do and could not imagine her life any other way.
Lynsey Addario understood that with her vocation and the dedication she had to it, how much she was risking. She watched old high school friends back home get married, buy homes, and start families. If she were not a conflict photographer, she would have been doing the same thing as them. Addario “hated herself for being so driven” (Addario 66). She said no to many aspects of everyday life, and it sometimes hurt to be that way. Gregg Levoy has been writing about vocation in magazines with the New York Times and the Washington Post (“Bio”), and in his book, Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, based on his experience, he says,
Saying yes to the calls tends to place you on a path that half of yourself thinks doesn’t make a bit of sense, but the other half knows your life won’t make sense without. This latter part, continually pushing out from within us with a centrifugal force, keeps driving us toward authenticity, against the tyranny of fear and inertia and occasionally reason, against terrific odds, and against the knocking in our hearts that signals the hour. (4)
Even when someone pursues their vocation, pain and sacrifice come with it, but they keep pushing forward because they would feel empty without it. Addario shares the same sentiments that Gregg Levoy talks about in his book. They both acknowledge the pain and suffering apparent in dedicating yourself to a vocation so fully. However, Levoy explains, and Addario shows, that they never give up and would never want to.
The people who dedicate themselves to a vocation are often called “workaholics,” with a predominantly negative connotation. A workaholic is customarily thought of as someone who does nothing outside of their job, and they often have personal issues outside of work due to their long hours and dedication. The issues revolve around struggling to keep relationships healthy, either romantic or platonic. In a study by the University of Waikato, workaholics often have issues with “forming and maintaining intimate relationships” (L. McMillan, et al. 173). For Addario, it was common to lose romantic relations and friendships. One of the first boyfriends she lost was due to whom she was friends with because of her vocation. Many of Addario’s friends came from her belief that she should get close to her subjects before photographing them so she could share their stories. She did this with the transgender prostitutes she was photographing in New York early in her career. One night she was on a date with her boyfriend at the time, and a group of her friends, the transgender prostitutes, walked up, and they started talking to her (Addario 36). When her boyfriend asked who they were and if she knew them, she said yes, and he walked away. They never saw each other again.
Years later, Addario met a man in Mexico City named Uxval, and they began to date. Even while she traveled the world photographing different war zones, they maintained a long-distance relationship. However, Uxval had been cheating on Addario for most of their relationship. He felt lonely when she was gone for months and would turn to others to fill the hole Addario left. Over time, they knew they would not make a good couple, so Addario sent him money while she was on assignment and told him to go home to Mexico City. She had to sacrifice one of her closest relationships to pursue her vocation, her calling. Since “most male correspondents had wives or faithful girlfriends waiting at home,” and women photojournalists struggled to find someone who was not “threatened by [their] commitment to [their] work or put off by the relentless travel schedule,” it meant she lost the one thing most people wanted more than anything (Addario 113). The type of people who become workaholics or pursue their vocation often sacrifice relationships. Since keeping a relationship takes time, the amount of time a workaholic puts into their vocation does not leave much time to dedicate to relationships, often leaving the person with very few close relationships.
People pursuing a vocation must decide they are willing to risk everything. In Doctors’ Work: Eulogy for my Vocation, Dr. David Loxterkamp, a practicing family physician, says, “But I was called too often. Away from my wife and kids. Away from the self-satisfaction of enjoying a job well done, or reflecting on the deep inner needs of my nature” (268). However, Loxterkamp knew there was nothing else he would rather do. He learned how to balance his life to the best of his abilities, so he could continue to do everything he loved. When pursuing a vocation, perseverance is vital. Trying to balance your pursuit and other aspects of life is tiring. However, the only way to make it to the end of the day is to keep pushing forward.
Addario persevered when she lived in Buenos Aires early in her career and struggled to find assignments. After many rejections, she began working for a newspaper in Buenos Aires. They did not give her many opportunities, but she had a fire and never gave up on her dream or calling to take pictures for news sources. Addario risked it all for photography by moving across the country and never took the easy way out when people tore her down. She always had a fire and a relentless spirit of testing new things and seeing how far she could push the limits. Once Addario felt ready, she moved back to New York to pursue her vocation further, and she started with grim assignments. Nevertheless, she persevered in pursuing her calling in Buenos Aires and New York. Vocation “requires a cussed determination to prevail, especially in the face of a bewildering paradox that lies at the heart of each of our calls and each of our lives” (Levoy 4).
What is your vocation? Some people have many vocations, and others take years to find their vocation. In her essay Vocation, Psychologically Speaking, Donna K. McMillian said, “I am a psychologist. I am a college professor. I am a wife, daughter, sister, and friend. These are my callings. In a welcome change from my computer scientist dilemma of years ago, I find that I readily endorse these vocations, fully embracing them as part of, as William James said, my “truest, strongest, and deepest self” (D. McMillan 81). Early in her life, she had a crisis where she was not sure who she was. She had a degree in computer sciences, but when someone asked her if she was a computer scientist, she did not know how to answer. Then, she found her passion in her family and teaching and that having multiple callings was how she felt most fulfilled. First, however, she had to balance all these callings in her life. McMillan learned to say no to other things in order to fulfill her vocations. “It can be frightening to fully invest yourself in a path; by so doing you necessarily preclude other possibilities, and the outcome of this chosen path now becomes a higher stakes proposition” (McMillan 79). It terrified her, but at the end of the day, she knew that those were the callings she had to pursue. When pursuing a vocation, or multiple ones, the more dedication found on that path, the more focused a person’s life becomes. It can be terrifying to be on one path with no backup plans, but it is hard to ignore the passion for the vocation if someone hears the call.
Addario also realized that she had multiple callings. For most of her adult life, she always wanted a family, husband, and kids. However, she was unsure how to have all those and a career. Early in her career, she met a writer named Elizabeth. Elizabeth got sick when she and Addario were preparing to head out on an assignment in the Korengal Valley. Addario then called Elizabeth to check on her, and Elizabeth told Addario she was pregnant. When Addario heard this, she realized both parts of her calling could be pursued. She could have a family and a career. The idea still terrified her, but she started having conversations with Paul, her husband. They decided that she would go off birth control in 2011 so they could start trying to get pregnant. Soon after starting to try to get pregnant, they did. Then, she went to the doctor, and they told her she could not work like she was used to. Flying to and from assignments and where she was going on assignments were both very dangerous for the baby. She had to choose what she wanted to do next. Addario could either stay home and keep the baby safe or go on assignment and risk the baby’s life. Soon after the doctor’s visit, she went to Senegal for an assignment. She had decided the benefits of going on assignment outweighed the risk that might come. It ended up not harming the baby, and she could keep pursuing and pushing the boundaries of her career. She had risked the baby’s life but was used to risking her life to pursue her calling. She found a new way to push herself to the next level of her vocation. Risking one’s own life for a vocation requires dedication, but risking someone else’s life requires a belief in a higher calling and a trust to follow it.
The ultimate sacrifice is required for some vocations. Who would risk their own lives for what many consider just a job? Most people would not be willing to make this sacrifice. Soldiers are asked to make this sacrifice, and during times of war, many do end up making this sacrifice. Soldiers know they might not go home if they are called to go into harm’s way in battle. They might die. Soldiers must be dedicated and believe in what they are doing to make this sacrifice. However, soldiers are not the only people who make this choice. For example, Lynsey Addario made the choice to risk her life for conflict photography and the chance to share others’ stories. One day, Addario was in a car accident on the way to Mardan in Pakistan. This was seemingly an easy drive that should not have turned into tragedy. Unfortunately, her driver, Raza, died in the crash, a fellow photojournalist, Teru, was minorly injured, and Addario had a shattered collarbone and severe burns on her back. Since this car ride was supposed to be routine and quickly turned to tragedy, she realized how risk-filled her life was after this accident. This was a moment she was closest to making the ultimate sacrifice for her vocation, but not the only time. One of the first times she risked her life was in the Middle East when the Taliban kidnaped her. The Taliban had kidnaped other journalists, and most of their stories ended in tragedy. After being shuttled for days and psychologically tortured, she and her teammates were let go and went home. Once she got home, she prepared for the worst. When she returned home, she “signed [her] first will in a flak jacket, holding [her] helmet in [her] left hand” (Addario 131). She understood that photography was what she felt she was called to do, what she loved doing, and what gave her a sense of identity, but it also took away the normalcy of life and could kill her. As a result, she became “a photojournalist willing to die for stories that had the potential to educate people” (Addario 134).
Sometimes following a vocation means leaving the life someone has built for years. This could be with transferring jobs, or it could mean leaving where someone has established their home. Lynsey Addario had to sacrifice a conventional home, so she never felt settled. “Now going home felt like leaving home, too” (Addario 105). She could never find a place to call home because photography made her feel comfortable and at peace. It was her home which made it even harder to start a family because photography called her to be on assignment so often. Since she did not have an established home, it made family life harder.
Sometimes, instead of traveling a lot, some vocations require moving every few years from home to home. Since I want to be a conductor, I have researched their lifestyle. When a professional conductor gets a new contract with an orchestra, they almost always have to relocate to the location of the orchestra. Since most contracts are only a few years, conductors move quite frequently. Because of this constant moving, conductors, especially younger ones, do not have families because they struggle to make the connections to do so. Pursuing any vocation can make many obstacles come in the way of other aspects of life. However, the people who genuinely have found and follow their calling find a way around the obstacle or are willing to sacrifice it to grow more into their calling.
Following a vocation can mean risking aspects of everyday life to walk down their chosen path. However, if someone is following a vocation, they must decide what they will risk and how far they will push themselves to live out their vocation. Addario shows how she risked her life, family, romantic relationships, and friendships to follow her calling of conflict photography. McMillian describes everyone with a vocation must have that determination. “Vocation is not a passive process. It requires self-knowledge and commitment to act. It requires the sensitivity to listen and the courage to proceed. It is ever unfolding and developing. And it has the power to enrich many areas of life.” She describes the dedication everyone with a vocation must have. Soldiers, accountants, orchestra conductors, doctors, parents, and teachers must constantly be aware of what they are doing and how their calling is growing and changing. Everyone I have talked to about their vocation and what it means to them has all said the same thing: it is hard. Even though I am young, I understand what they mean. You have to risk simple aspects of life, push yourself to the extremes you did not know you had, and learn things about yourself that you would never have when following a vocation. Since pursuing my vocation of orchestra conducting at seventeen, I have lost friends, pushed myself, worked eighteen hours a day for weeks, moved across the country, and left my family. None of this was easy, but with every step I get closer to my goal, I realize how much more fulfilled my life has become. Life without passion is meaningless, but it requires sacrifice to follow a calling. However, when someone follows their vocation, they find their life.
Works Cited
Addario, Lynsey. It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War. Penguin Books. 2015.
“Bio.” Gregg Levoy – Author Speaker Bio, 2015, https://www.gregglevoy.com/bio/index.html.
Levoy, Gregg. Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life. Harmony Books, 1997.
Loxterkamp, David. “Doctors’ Work: Eulogy for My Vocation.” Annals of Family Medicine, vol. 7, no. 3, May 2009, pp. 267–68. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.cordproxy.mnpals.net/10.1370/afm.986.
McMillan, Donna. “Vocation, Psychologically Speaking.” Claiming Our Callings: Toward a New Understanding of Vocation in the Liberal Arts, edited by Kaethe Schwehn and L. DeAne Lagerquist, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 72-82.
McMillan, Lynley H W, et al. “The Impact of Workaholism on Personal Relationships.” British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, vol. 32, no. 2, 2004, pp. 171–186. Academic Search Premier. https://doi.org/10.1080/03069880410001697729.
Rehm, Marsha. “Vocation as Personal Calling: A Question for Education.” The Journal of Educational Thought (JET) / Revue de La Pensée Éducative, vol. 24, no. 2, 1990, pp. 114–25. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23767966. Accessed 22 Feb. 2023.
Sousa, Cá, et al. “Work-Oriented Men and Women: Similar Levels of Work-Family Conflict and Guilt Yet Different Coping Strategies.” Psychological Thought, vol. 11, no. 2, 2018, pp. 195-211. ProQuest, http://cordproxy.mnpals.net/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/work-oriented-men-women-similar-levels-family/docview/2531194594/se-2, doi:https://doi.org/10.5964/psyct.v11i2.291\.