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Moral Romanticism
A vocation is a strong sense of calling that propels a person toward a certain job or occupation. In The Road to Character, David Brooks contrasts vocation with career. A career is something a person chooses, whereas a vocation is something a person is called to do. When a person has a vocation, they are not asking themselves what they want out of life but are rather responding to what life and circumstances are asking of them. Almost all the exemplars in The Road to Character have vocations in some form, but Frances Perkins is the clearest example: she sacrificed everything she had to serve the cause of workers’ rights, feeling that this cause was calling her.
Vocation Quotes in The Road to Character
The The Road to Character quotes below are all either spoken by Vocation or refer to Vocation. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2: The Summoned Self
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In [Frances Perkins’s] method, you don’t ask, What do I want from life? You ask a different set of questions: What does life want from me? What are my circumstances calling me to do? In this scheme of things we don’t create our lives; we are summoned by life.
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One sees this in people with a vocation—a certain rapt expression, a hungry desire to perform a dance or run an organization to its utmost perfection. They feel the joy of having their values in deep harmony with their behavior.
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Perkins didn’t so much choose her life. She responded to the call of a felt necessity. A person who embraces a calling doesn’t take a direct route to self-fulfillment. She is willing to surrender the things that are most dear, and by seeking to forget herself and submerge herself she finds a purpose that defines and fulfills herself. Such vocations almost always involve tasks that transcend a lifetime.
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Chapter 5: Self-Mastery
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The customs of [an] institution structure the soul, making it easier to be good. They guide behavior gentle along certain time-tested lines. By practicing the customs of an institution, we are not alone; we are admitted into a community that transcends time.
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Chapter 8: Ordered Love
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If you think you can organize your own salvation you are magnifying the very sin that keeps you from it. To believe that you can be captain of your own life is to suffer the sin of pride.
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Chapter 10: The Big Me
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If you believe that the ultimate oracle is the True Self inside, then of course you become emotivist—you make moral judgements on the basis of feelings that burble up. Of course you become a relativist. One True Self has no basis to judge or argue with another True Self. Of course you become an individualist, since the ultimate arbiter is the authentic self within and not any community standard or external horizon of significance without.
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Vocation Term Timeline in The Road to Character
The timeline below shows where the term Vocation appears in The Road to Character. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: The Summoned Self
...broader cause of workers’ rights for the rest of her life. Her career became a vocation.
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Brooks distinguishes a vocation from a career. A vocation is not chosen, and it doesn’t necessarily advance you in...
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However, Brooks maintains that people with vocations are usually happy. He makes a distinction between serving one’s community and serving one’s work....
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...husband’s and daughter’s collapses were somehow her fault. This goes to show that Perkins’s public vocation was never quite enough to make up for her private solitude.
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...of “I,” suggesting that her actions weren’t hers but were what any person with a vocation would do.
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...Her self-discipline diminished her personal life. However, this helped her completely devote herself to her vocation and lead “a summoned life.” She didn’t choose her life. Rather, she answered a calling,...
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Chapter 3: Self-Conquest
...often used to attack pleasure and enjoyment. Brooks claims that “sin” is an indispensable word—like “vocation”—that needs to be redefined so it can be used again.
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Chapter 4: Struggle
Day still hadn’t found her vocation. She needed a calling that involved self-surrender and commitment to something pure. She tried to...
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Chapter 7: Love
...Anne would write in her famous novel Middlemarch that many women experience a crisis of vocation; their yearning to be heroic makes them want more than what any outlet can give...
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Chapter 10: The Big Me
13. Every good life is organized around a vocation, a calling. 14. The best leaders work gradually and incrementally to effect change. 15. The...
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