What is your calling? If you know, you’re one of the lucky ones. I was not, or so I thought. But the life stories of people such as Oliver Sachs, neurologist, author and pioneer in narrative medicine, helped me “see” what was there all along. 

Sachs’ calling was showcased in the story shared in Awakenings, a movie starring Robin Williams about patients momentarily brought out of their catatonic states after being given a drug. As in his other books, Sachs documented the “inner landscape” of medical conditions, and made them accessible to a general audience. 

“I storied them back into the world,” said Sachs in the PBS documentary Oliver Sachs: His Own Life. He gave them a narrative about their lives, he said, that provided meaning and purpose. In those acts, he claimed his calling even if he couldn’t see it at the time.

Sachs did not come to his calling easily. He was a closet gay man during a time when admitting that would land you in jail. That, coupled with the medical community’s lack of acceptance and respect for his work, led Sachs down a self-destructive, drug-riddled path early in his life. Lucky for us, he course-corrected.

In his seventies, when he started publishing, Sachs’ calling blossomed. He finally won the respect he had longed for, both in the medical community and the larger world. (Indeed, his way of interacting with patients is now the focus of programs such as Columbia University’s narrative medicine program). Sachs also found, quite by accident, the romantic partner that would be with him until his death at 82.

Sachs’ story reminds me that there is an inherent and intuitive design that guides our own stories and enables us to live our callings, even if we can’t see that design at the time. Yes, naming is claiming. But sometimes, the pull toward something you love—that intrigues you, excites you, impassions you, and insistently demands your attention—is all you need recognize.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, designs narrative- and game-based learning. She also writes and speaks about the power of story in our lives and world. www.cultureshape.com