Riley Duppong
Professor Scott Olsen
English 110
09 February 2024
The Duality of Vocation and Love
“Our work was our life. It defined who we were, it wasn’t just a job we did for a living, and I needed to hold on to that for as long as I could” (Addario 315).
Most people would consider being pregnant and putting yourself directly in hazardous war zones to be crazy, and perhaps they’re right. However, in Lynsey Addario’s mind, her work as a conflict photographer is her vocation– what she considers to be her purpose, her calling, even her definition. To her, if she didn’t put herself in such hazardous conditions, she would be selling herself short, even when it comes at the expense of her relationships with other people. In her autobiography It’s What I Do, Addario explores her internal struggle between two major themes prevalent in her life: vocation and relationships.
It’s What I Do is the story of Addario’s life– describing the timespan from when she was a child to after she’d had her own first child. She writes her life as an epic adventure, spending very little time describing her childhood. Lynsey views her childhood as largely the set-up for her calling and vocation of conflict photography; she doesn’t tend to go into much detail and describes the main events and people who set her up to become the person she does. The first scene in which Addario truly goes in to depth describing an event was when her father gave her her first camera, describing it as “like magic” (31). This kicked off Addario’s vocation of photography; the rest of her book describes in depth her travels and adventures as she pursues her work. Her book describes her endless passion for capturing the moment in a photo, her attempts to educate the general public about what’s going on in the rest of the world, and her brushes with death. Additionally, It’s What I Do describes the other most important part of Addario’s life: her relationships with other people. From her family back in the United States, through countless boyfriends, and eventually her husband and son, Lynsey describes in depth every major relationship in her life. These two sides of her life, her vocation and her relationships, provide a duality that Addario struggles with throughout the course of her life. Both sides of this struggle as well as the struggle itself are painted as three major themes throughout the book that are all interconnected in endless ways; it speaks to how these themes play out on a broader scale in the universal human experience.
For Addario, conflict photography serves as her calling: “When I am doing my work, I am alive and I am me” (22). This isn’t just a job for her; it’s what she believes she was meant to do. Photography is like a magnet drawing her in, something she feels she has to pursue. Even when Addario was semi-content with living with her boyfriend in Mexico, when she had the opportunity to pursue a good story, she “had to go” (107). When she had the opportunity to pursue breaking news, she immediately left her happy time with her partner to do so.
The theme of vocation is so pertinent to Addario and her story that she spends a significant chunk of her introduction describing what photography means to her. She understands that she puts herself in extreme danger to pursue this, but she repeatedly chooses to do so nearly every chance she gets. There is a difference between surviving and really living; without pursuing this vocation, Addario would be physically alive but she would not feel as if she’s truly living. This speaks to photography being her calling- something she’s willing to simultaneously live and die for. She’s willing to put her loved ones through the extreme stress of knowing she might not come back from an assignment. Perhaps that is selfish, but in her mind, she wouldn’t be truly living if she were not pursuing this vocation; for her, this is necessary. It’s something that’s so crucially important to her that she is willing to make those sacrifices every time she goes on an assignment, which she decides to do again and again throughout the course of her life. Additionally, every time Addario goes on an assignment, she “felt more strongly about the need to continue going back” (172). She makes it absolutely clear that conflict photography is what she was meant to do.
This dedication to Addario’s vocation provides an interesting and meaningful juxtaposition with the other most important part of her life; her relationships with her loved ones. This other major theme is shown throughout It’s What I Do as something else that is crucial to Addario. There are many relationships throughout the book that are portrayed as deeply important to her, such as her father (164), several boyfriends throughout the course of her life, her eventual husband (203), and her son (330). This theme is so crucially important to Addario that throughout the course of the book, she intersperses her discussion regarding her vocation – arguably the most important thing – with the discussion regarding these relationships. The most prominent type of relationship Addario describes having had throughout the course of the book is romantic, and she describes deep passion for these. With Addario’s first boyfriend, Uxval, she explains “there was a lightness and spontaneity and romance to my relationship with Uxval, something I’d never felt before” (83). Their romance, as passionate as Addario was towards him, was marked by Uxval’s infidelity and disloyalty throughout, something that Addario struggled with greatly. Eventually, out of both her love for him and her vocation, she “accepted his philandering as one of the compromises of the work and lifestyle I had chosen” (138). She knew that she couldn’t have both as much as she would like to, but she was willing to make those compromises out of her love for both.
A second romance which was portrayed as being very important to Addario was the relationship that she had with a fellow photographer named Matthew. This relationship worked initially because they were both conflict photographers, and they became a “good photographer-writer team” (Addario 147). Their romance became so passionate that despite having “tenuous commitments to other people, it never occurred to me that they could endure, given the depth of our feelings for each other” (Addario 148). Promptly after falling for Matthew, Addario dropped her previously very important relationship with Uxval to be with this new person who frankly fit her life much better. Despite having a deeply passionate romance and a lot of good times working together, eventually “the question of us, our future as a team beyond Iraq, loomed large” (Addario 165). Once again, vocation proved to be much more important to her than this relationship, as she chose to pursue that and let Matthew go.
However, when Addario met her future husband Paul, everything changed: “I knew we would probably spend the rest of our lives together” (203). Finally, she had met someone who truly understood and cared for her. Addario describes Paul as being “energetically supportive, excited to help me plan my reporting, fascinated by the next possible story, and visibly proud of my accomplishments” (203). This was, therefore, Addario’s first experience with real romantic love– true compatibility with her and her vocation. It makes sense given Addario’s deep sense of vocation that ‘the one’ for her would fall in love with her vocation too, as that was a genuine part of her. She even describes earlier, during her failed relationship with Uxval, “Some part of me knew, or hoped, that real love should complement my work, not take away from it” (85). This goes to show that real love is understanding of the whole of oneself; real love compliments vocation. Addario’s previous lovers couldn’t live with her vocation; perhaps on some level they did love her, but without that level of compatibility with her core value, it wasn’t real love.
Another powerful form of love is the bond between a mother and child. When Addario became pregnant with her son, Lukas, this presented a real struggle. Addario describes the struggle between her vocation and carrying her son as, “the most incongruous, most unfair juxtaposition of life and death I had felt since I began my journey as a photographer” (321). Her love for her vocation and her love for her unborn child were tearing her apart. Even still, Addario felt a need to continue pursuing her calling, even during the early stages of her pregnancy; she went to Gaza (323) despite the potential danger to herself and her son.
During her pregnancy, Addario was paralyzed with her fear of losing her ability to pursue conflict photography. She explains that she was “holding on to my identity, my freedom, what I had been working toward my entire adult life– as well as panic that it was all about to disappear with the birth of my child” (321). This once again shows the struggle that Addario wrestled with continuously, except this time it is not with her partner; it is with her own child. Her husband Paul had shown her that romantic love is not necessarily incompatible with vocation, but she did not yet recognize that being a mother did not have to be incompatible with her vocation also.
However, after Lukas was born, Addario’s heart softened as she fell in love with being a mother. After Lukas’ birth, that fear melted into a joy so powerful it even superceded her love for her vocation: “I had this baby whom Paul and I had created, and we felt a joy and a love that far exceeded anything we had ever known” (330). She spent several months with Lukas, knowing that “I must cherish my initial months as a mother, because it would be one of the rare occasions I could allow myself to indulge in nothing other than loving and caring for Lukas” (Addario 330). Addario was fine with this, even joyful; she was finally learning that there could be something more important to her than photography. She had created a loving family, and fell in love with nurturing that family. For several months, she was happy with just that position.
This did not, however, permanently take away from her vocation; it wasn’t as if Addario could ever lose such a crucial part of her in its entirety. Eventually, she had to be true to herself and continue pursuing photography; naturally, this decision included the struggle between vocation and love. After several months of being with her family, Addario was “happier and more complete with my new family than I had ever been before”, but she was “still restless to get back out in the field and cover the stories I felt strongly about” (333). She did so with the grave understanding that she might be put in perilous predicaments; that if something happened to her, she might never get to watch her son grow up. Her son might be forced to grow up without a mother. However, out of this understanding for her son, Addario became much more selective in the way that she pursued stories, and with what stories to pursue. She explains, “I eventually started feeling comfortable saying no to breaking-news stories: I was more selective about assignments after the birth of my son, and I weighed the importance of every story with every day that would keep me away from my family” (333). These decisions show off Addario’s growing understanding of the duality of love and vocation; an understanding that to effectively pursue both, she would have to make compromises on both fronts.
Such is the reality of the human condition; something uniquely human is that we wrestle with these two crucial facets of our lives. For many, such as Addario, it is a struggle for the entirety of one’s life. How this plays out on a grand scale is incredibly varied and diverse: college students dealing with extreme homesickness in order to pursue their degree, a single father working overtime in the job he loves, even if it means leaving his son alone, just to support said son…or, in some cases, as in Addario’s fear, having either love or vocation take away from the other. Oftentimes, as in Addario’s case, it can be incredibly hard to make that decision. Pursuing one’s vocation – especially if potentially hazardous or physically located so far away from those who love them – can place an immense toll on those relationships. As seen in the losses of her relationships with Uxval and Matthew, that expense can be the total losses of the relationships. Pursuing one’s love, as in the case of the first few months after Lukas’ birth, can prevent oneself from pursuing one’s vocation. The decision between these two facets of the human condition is often incredibly difficult. The story of Addario’s life is an extreme example of this, as her vocation takes place on the other side of the world and in conditions that could cost her her life. Regardless, it is still a shining example of this part of the human experience.
However, Addario’s story does point out something critically important to understand about this duality: that real love compliments vocation, especially in the case of romantic love. A real lover will not just respect such an important part of one’s life, they will actively encourage the pursuit of it. The difference between a job and a vocation, as Addario puts it, is that during the pursuit of her vocation, “I am alive and I am me” (22). To love her therefore also includes love of her vocation. Her beautiful relationship with Paul shows that this is, indeed, possible. If love does not go hand in hand with vocation, it is not real love. The natural importance that humans put on either can blind us from that fact, as in Addario’s hyperfixation on her failing relationship with Uxval. Therefore, the struggle itself between these two is another core part of the human experience that is often overlooked; so often, one’s focus is placed on either component.
A deep understanding of vocation, love, and the struggle between them can lead to a rich life full of success both in one’s personal and professional lives. Understanding that the two can compliment each other – even in extreme circumstances – is what leads to ultimate fulfillment: satisfaction of what is arguably the two most important parts of the human experience. It is the recipe for happiness, even with the ever-present struggle between them. Even within extreme circumstances, it is possible: human nature both requires this while also making it so. The incredible life of Lynsey Addario is a beautiful testiment to this fact. Her adventures, as documented in It’s What I Do, are a perfect example of the duality of vocation and love as well as the ever-present but ever-joyous struggle between two core components of being human.
Work Cited
Addario, Lynsey. It’s What I Do. Penguin, 2015.