There was a show once that had an episode where everyone in the world not only believed in past lives, but remembered them as well as they remembered yesterday. The main character of the story was the only person who didn't know his own history. In the end he helps people forget their past lives so they could move forward with their current one. I had a similar story idea where instead of past lives, people knew exactly what they're true calling was. This might seem like a good thing because there are many people out there who feel lost. They don't know what they're supposed to be doing and a little bit of guidance would go a long way. The problem with knowing though is that maybe your true calling wasn't something awesome. Maybe it was something you were meant to do, but at the same time it felt wrong because it wasn't something you or those around you hoped for. Instead of being a great musician, you are a seamstress. Much like the show about past lives, the main character would help people forget their calling and just experience life as it came to them. That meant there was a chance at going through life without always having a clear sense of direction. A past life or a true calling, they both could be viewed as a sort of destiny. Destiny can imply there is a lack of free will because it's meant to happen regardless of what we do to prevent or enable it.
A true calling is an interesting idea though. It would mean that each of us has a purpose in this world. Only a few get to figure out what that purpose is though. And it's hard to say if we ever really know our true purpose in this world. Is it really our calling or just the one that we've created for ourselves? Maybe it comes down to belief. If we believe that we're living up to our real purpose then maybe that's all that matters. We've all heard stories about someone who was great at something who at one point could have made a different choice. The writer who could have stayed as a carpenter and may have been entirely happy with that choice, but wouldn't have gone on to write the great American novel. I suppose it brings up the question of by which standard is someone's true calling really judged? To the outside world it may seem like the author has found what he was meant to do. To the author's family it could seem like a frivolous way to make a living. To the author himself there could be the longing question of 'what if' that sticks with him, regardless of how successful he has become. Just because we're good at something doesn't mean that's what we're supposed to do with our lives. Sometimes our talent towards something is just that. I don't believe that people are singular in their abilities. We're all multifaceted. Sometimes in ways that even we don't understand.
It also got me wondering about what other people know. When you meet someone for the first time you may not know what they know. In fact in most cases you can only have a partial understanding of everything they have experienced. The person you passed on the street could be a geneticist or a computer programmer working on artificial intelligence or a mind blowing artist. On the surface they may be very similar to you or me. They watch television or laugh at funny pictures of cats, but they have a deeper understanding of something you may never fully comprehend. Thing is that in a lot of cases the same could be said about you by someone else. We tend to take for granted the knowledge we've acquired. The lifetime of experience we've gathered up serves as reference for everything we will do. The question is though, does that knowledge always serve to lead you towards your true calling, if there is such a thing?
Are we put here for a reason or are we just the eventuality of cosmic chance? Given the size of the universe and its age, it's hard to really comprehend how all the complex things must be in a specific order for each of us to be born. Life as we know it could be considered a miracle since for as far as we can see out into the abyss, there is only us. That's not to say there aren't others like us out there, we just haven't been able to find them. Could be that somewhere out there is another miracle. So if our life is by some sort of design that would mean we each have a purpose in this world. If that's true then how come only a few of us ever really figure out what our calling is? Could it be that our purpose is to search our entire lives for it and not find it, so that those who do find their purpose have it mean that much more to them? Seems like a really inefficient ratio of undefined purposes in the world. This gives more strength to the argument that maybe there is no grand design to the universe. That everything and all people are guided by nothing but chaos. Those that do find their true calling are more fortunate than they can imagine because they are the exception. Maybe there is no such thing as a true purpose, only the purpose that we create for ourselves and those around us. Maybe we define our own route through the universe, regardless of if there was ever a plan for us or if it's all just a collection of random events colliding with each other.
