Callings

When I was young, I thought I had one Calling, one enduring vocation or purpose in life. Lately, I've come to realize that it might be more of a hierarchy of Callings, and that like everything else in the universe, these Callings and their relationships are dynamic. As Mrs. Judy Berry told us repeatedly in Chemistry class, the only constant is change. Certainly, the way I have learned to listen to God/ the Universe's callings has changed. The tools I have acquired to serve these Callings have also definitely changed as a result of my education and experience. 

In fact, I have reached a pain point. I hear Conflicting Callings. Sometimes even contrasting Callings, like Art and Science. And so many Callings that I cannot serve them all, or even a few, well at once. How do you decide what calling to serve when all are noble and necessary? When all help you remember the joys and miracle of all creation? When all are open to you and require roughly the same amount of work and resources to pursue (i.e. there is no one obviously expeditious pick)?

In high school, I knew I wanted to help. "Helping" was my calling. Specifically, I wanted to help people process their emotions and find meaning in their lives. Mainly I considered two possible careers, one as a writer, or one in psychology. Eventually, I decided that I could be a writer with any education, but I could not be a psychologist without degrees in psychology.  I also thought it likely that learning psychology would make me a better writer (with a better understanding of characters' motivations). This realization solved the painful need to make decisions about what to do after graduation. Granted I still had to make many decisions along the way...like would I be of best helps to others in finding meaning in life as a Clinical, Counseling, or Industrial-Organizational Psychologist? Could I serve well enough with a master's or did I need a doctorate? And the questions have never really ended. Should I work as a research scientist or as an applied scientist-practitioner? As an internal or external consultant? For a non-profit providing a critical service or for a private corporation employing hundreds of thousands providing infrastructure? What about teaching too, just adults on the job or higher education as well? Where is the sweet spot of greatest need fitted to my particular greatest strengths?

I was always looking for that one, sweet spot. The Calling...and maybe that is the problem. Maybe there is one big Calling factor with dimensions and sub-factors, just like we have a personality with 5 dimensions (OCEAN) that can be interpreted into 16+ further sub-factors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality)? Maybe my main Calling is simply, "to help others find meaning in life" and there are dimensions I must shift my attention to over the course of my life like writing, psychology, art, love, caretaking, etc. And even among those dimensions, there are sub-factors, like poetry, fiction, research articles, and textbooks under the dimension for writing. I couldn't stop myself from writing poetry in my first 30 years of life, but after that, I longed to write books. Every dimension has competing sub-factors like that for me. When asked what I want the next five or ten years of my life to look like now (compared to being asked this question a decade ago)...I have a very difficult time answering. Now I want my life in ten years to look like everything. I want to be the old lady in argyle socks with a chicken and two cats in the front basket of her bicycle peddling to the farmer's market to sell paintings on Saturday who does yoga and a cooking class with kids on Sunday, who coaches the executive board of the SPCA on Monday, runs a teamwork simulation for firefighters on Tuesday, writes a romance the rest of the week, and then leaves to present Grand Rounds at a hospital in Auckland and hike in New Zealand on Friday. It's impossible.

Or is it? It's certainly impossible to achieve so many outcomes. But what if I let go of the outcomes? What if I let go of the timetable? What if I just think about the doing, the dimensions themselves, instead of what doing them looks like or achieves? What if I just make sure I am doing something in every dimension of my Calling? I can do art, do writing, do psychology, do love, etc. That is possible. Maybe I won't "achieve" much in any one dimension, but is that really the point? What if the point is simply that I help myself find joy and meaning in life? What if that helps others do so too? Just that. 

Lately, I think the Calling, sounds like it is telling me to serve as a polymath. A polymath is traditionally thought to mean a "renaissance man," who has mastered many talents, and we picture someone like Leonardo DaVinci. I'm no Leo. But the dictionary definition of a polymath isn't about talents or outcomes. The dictionary definition of a polymath is "a person of wide-ranging learning." When I am widely active, open to and learning everything, I am happiest. I find life has great meaning for me the more widely I learn. I gain a wealth of experiences...even when I accomplish very little. In turn, that wealth of experience makes it easier for me to listen to and understand what others are sharing more fully. I become someone who understands others well, I become more equipped to help others...and maybe that is the biggest, most helpful calling I could possibly serve anyway? Is there anything more needed than someone who helps others feel heard and understood? That sounds like a grand Calling to me.

Maybe the sweet spot isn't where my interests in writing, psychology, art, love, etc. all coalesce to serve in the greatest possible way to help people. The sweet spot could be doing all of these things in ways that bring me a great balance of joy and learning. If I enjoy the learning, I will learn more. If I learn such a wide variety of things, I can understand and share in more ways all the things that bring others more meaningful lives. I have no doubt that a deep connection to purpose is important, but I think I  hyper-focused on depth for a while. 

The universe is deep and broad, and to paraphrase many religions, "I am nothing. I am everything. I am the universe." We are all made of the same stuff. The signal I hear now says be broad and deep.

I am writing, consulting, teaching, and braving another dimension now too: creating art. I've always doodled, and I've been into photography since 1992...these arts were a way for me to notice and honor the existing beauty in the world. A hobby. I started sharing #RandomEverydayBeauty photos on Facebook in 2005...I felt a calling to share the glimpses of beauty I noticed in case others needed them too. In 2018 I felt a tug to try drawing for Inktober: a commitment to doodle one thing a day in ink for 31 days. The act of drawing centered me. For a few minutes each day, I didn't think about anything except observing and creating. I've done Inktober every year since then, but in 2021 something special happened. Another polymath professor asked me to join a faculty, staff, and student art club online so we could share Inktober efforts and inspirations. The sharing went so well, we made it go on beyond October. I started drawing something every week, even after October. I asked friends if they wanted a painting or drawing of anything just so I could stretch my skills on new subjects. Friends offered birds, pets, landscapes, loved ones, random ideas (...I'm looking at you fellow author who asked for a chicken smoking a cigarette) for me to paint. 

I decided to sell a few of these efforts on RedBubble.com so I could pay for more art supplies, so I could paint more, so I could learn more. More artists started sharing their art with me, inspiring new ideas, and helping me understand their motivations better. I became even wealthier in friends. And one gift I did not expect...I've found such joy in painting portraits of family, babies, and pets in ways that are meaningful for others. I just did it to practice at first, but lately, everyone I've done one for has mentioned something about how the painting allows them to represent their memories and the spirit of the subject better than their photos (that have stuff they don't want in the backgrounds or don't have all of the people they want in it together, etc.). I am answering a call to help that I didn't hear before today. I'm open to these calls now too. Van Gogh lost an ear, lived in an asylum broke and unknown, but loved art enough to just do lots of it every day anyway... it could be that he knew learning in this dimension was worth everything for him at that moment? Van Gogh only sold one painting while he was alive, for 400 francs (roughly worth $4,000 today), seven months before his death. He never knew any of the outcomes like how many millions of people would study and love his art because it helped them see the world's beauty. I take it as a lesson...I may not know how I'm helping, but I can't help at all if I don't answer the Callings, listen to their dimensions and reply to whatever sub-factors come up.

https://laceysarts.com/

This is my painting of a Queen Butterfly serving its "Calling" as a pollinator.

The 7 C's of Psychologically Sexy

Helen E. Fisher, Ph.D. (a biological anthropologist) describes 3 brain systems for love: lust, attraction, and attachment (http://helenfisher.com/downloads/articles/15npolve.pdf). Our neurology, biology, and the environments (both social and physical) that we live in have conspired (through evolution) to create these 3 brain systems. In one way or another, all 3 systems are interested in helping us perpetuate life (our own, new/ next generational, social communities, etc.). The Lust Brain drives us to seek sexual gratification (inspiring us to expend precious energy to procreate, i.e. create lives). The Attraction Brain inspires us to focus on winning and guarding the beneficial relationships that make us most interested in living. The Attachment Brain influences us to cooperate and build the communal and compassionate relationships that sustain lives. Obviously, being physically sexy helps you engage someone's lust brain...but in humans, something curious happens pretty quickly...we start looking at the deep-level characteristics in others (e.g. personality, values, principles, faith, etc.) as we interact with them in groups (https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/256901). Maybe even more shocking, we can find ourselves eventually lusting after someone we've become attached to, who didn't physically trigger our lust...attraction can sneak in after the fact! (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1971-08141-001) We can even come to think of an objectively attractive person as downright homely or ugly if they are (or become) psychologically ugly (e.g. aggressive, cynical, abusive). It turns out that being psychologically sexy is where it's at!

So regardless of gender, sexual orientation, age, race, culture, and dozens of other specifiers...what generally makes one person psychologically sexy to another? The answer from psychological research so far seems to be easiest to summarize using these seven C's: (Note: Famed teams researcher, Eduardo Salas, Ph.D., has the seven c's of effective teamwork; so I owe the conceptual model to him.)

1. Consenting: People who first consent or agree that we are interesting, earn our interest in return. Furthermore, people who ask for our consent before taking action that impacts us earn our trust. For example, most of us think it's pretty nice when someone tells us they find us attractive and ask if they can kiss or hug us. Even in long-term relationships, we rate our spouses as more attractive when they habitually tell us they would like to surprise us and ask if a specific time to do so would work for us before committing to expensive trips or dinners, etc.
2. Competent: We find it sexy when a person has the necessary knowledge, ability, or skill to do something difficult that we value. This is part of what makes certain professions so attractive and why romantic heroes/ heroines frequently have jobs that obviously involve some calling (rather than just an occupation) - such as civil rights lawyer or ER doctor. It goes further than that though (after all we're still attracted to unemployed folks who answer callings in other ways)...because our brains associate competence with integrity and this triggers our trust that they will devote the time necessary to learn and care for our relationship too.
3. Caring: We like people who perform acts of kindness, and we love people who perform acts of kindness to us. Why? Because acts of kindness maximize our social benefits and minimize our social costs. We feel a sense of obligation toward those who do good things for us. When the caring/ good acts pile up enough we feel loved. Please note though, that to be considered a good thing, a caring act must be competently provided by someone in a consenting fashion (see the first two C's).
4. Compassionate: I know, you want to know how compassion is different than caring, so allow me to describe it a little first. Caring is an act. Compassion is a feeling. Specifically, the feeling of empathy or sympathy for the suffering or misfortune of another. Suffering cannot always be avoided or alleviated, and in these cases, we love folks who help us validate our feelings--it's all the emotional satisfaction we can obtain in some cases. We also love folks who try to understand us, it is part of expressing their interest in us even when they cannot provide caring.
5. Confident: There are two important meanings to this C. The first is we love those we can confide in. Those who make us feel like it is safe to be vulnerable, to be our full awkward selves. They won't hold our ugly moments against us in the long run. The second meaning is that they are confident/ self-assured enough in their own worth to accept our apologies when we do admit mistakes, and even, more importantly, to accept our acts of caring and compassion for them as the truth when it is. As anyone who has ever been in love with someone battling depression or drug- abuse can tell you, it is very difficult and demoralizing to offer caring and compassion to someone who cannot or will not accept it because their struggles have ruined too much of their confidence or self-worth. While we appreciate humility, most of us also find it unattractive when someone declines a deserved compliment. We're attracted to folks confident enough to accept a compliment (caring) when they deserve it. (Note that different cultures do define what deserving is very different though.)
6. Cooperative: We are more likely to be attracted to someone when we share a common goal, and we are attached to those who labor mutually toward that goal with us. Folks are psychologically sexy when they agree to cooperate to achieve something we both love or value (e.g. raising a child, building a home, saving enough money to retire, etc.). Families grow together faster and stay together longer when they keep agreeing and focusing on common goals that suit their energy realities. We find folks who will build something with us psychologically sexy, whereas folks who refuse to cooperate toward achieving a goal we've agreed on are a big turn-off...and often the seeds of divorce.
7. Creative: The last C is a tall order. We're attracted to people with original ideas, especially those people who have original ideas about how to embody and exhibit some of those previous C's over the duration of our relationship with them. When someone invents a new way to show us they care, express their empathy, build confidence with us, or cooperate toward an interesting new goal with us, then we love them all the more for it. When we are invited to mutual creativity we feel more alive and satisfied with living together.

Now for sailing the 7 C's...

Here is the good news. You can learn to be psychologically sexier...even if you're already sailing these seven C's you can always continue your mastery studies. As those of us with a growth mindset or a learning orientation already know, everything in the universe is constantly changing so there is always a need to learn how to adapt strength to new variations.

Here is the (maybe) bad news. Since everyone in every relationship you will ever have is growing and changing you can never completely master these seven C's. You will always have something to learn, but this also means you can continuously become more and more psychologically sexy, even as you age and your physical beauty fades.

Beauty is in the perceptions of the beholder, a cognitive process that happens behind the eye, rather than in the eye.

A few additional words for my fellow authors...

When it comes to writing romance, I think it becomes very obvious which authors must know this. The ones who do know are able to create characters that we come to deeply love in the span of a story by showing us how their behavior embodies these 7 C's. Whereas authors who rely on physical descriptions are able to create characters we can imagine lusting after but aren't really all that memorable (we don't really love to love them enough to remember them).

Gertrude Stein wrote, "Rose is a rose is a rose" and Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."