Work Work Work
I’ve been searching for my calling for decades. It is time for my approach to evolve.
My father was an FDNY Battalion Chief who died on 9/11. In the days after we learned he was missing at the World Trade Center, we were surrounded by friends, family, and firemen who offered comfort and shared their memories and photographs of my dad. Childhood friends sent snapshots of my teenage father mugging for the camera; firemen he worked with sent pictures taken over the years at the firehouse, on the rig, or at the company picnic. One classic shot is hanging in the kitchen at the quarters of my father’s old firehouse (L14/E34/B12 in East Harlem) and shows my dad in a pool, underwater, drinking a beer. Many local publications contacted my family to ask for pictures to run with their 9/11 coverage. They specifically wanted any photo where he was in uniform so my mother, sisters and I poured over family photo albums but as it turned out, we had very few.
After 23 years, it’s rare that I stumble upon a photo of my dad I’ve never seen before. But a few months ago, a friend sent me a one that had been posted in an FDNY Facebook group. My father was being interviewed by a reporter after a fire on 116th Street in East Harlem. He is wearing his helmet, from which you can see he is a Battalion Chief, his unbuttoned coat, and his bunker pants — a rarity! Under his coat you can see what appears to be his uniform shirt. He has his arms crossed and is leaning back slightly. To me, the expression on his face is one of mild suspicion and it’s directed at the reporter who is interviewing him.
When I first saw the picture, I forwarded it to my mother and sisters and mentally filed it away (like I have with all his photos I’ve studied over the years since we lost him). Yet over the ensuing months, I kept coming back to it because I realized my father’s body language was communicating something I’d never seen before when it came to his job. First, I’d never seen a photograph of my father when he was in uniform or with other fireman and not smiling. Second, his crossed arms and defensive posture suggest something negative in the conversation. And finally, the expression on his face is not his usual cheerful countenance but something else I can’t quite put my finger on.
This impression stuck with me because my father, simply but clearly, loved his job. He loved it so much he used to say he’d eventually have to be taken away in handcuffs because he would never retire voluntarily. He loved it so much he would go to work early and stay after his shift ended so he could catch up with whomever was coming in for the change of tours. He loved it so much he had no desire to rise above the rank of Battalion Chief, where he wouldn’t have had as many opportunities to run into burning buildings. He loved it so much that while he was technically off duty on the morning of 9/11 after his tour ended at 9 am, he got into the chief’s car with the responding chief, because he knew he would be needed. He was never really “off duty” in his mind.
If he was in a situation where someone needed help, he helped them. One night he arrived home from work hours later than usual. We knew his car had overheated in the Bronx because he called my grandfather to bring him water. After my father and grandfather got the car running again, he made his way home slowly along the Palisades Parkway and saw an accident where the car in front of him swerved, flipped over multiple times, and came to rest on the side of the Parkway. My father pulled over to see how he could help.
A woman was trapped upside down, couldn’t get her seat belt off and the door wouldn’t open from the outside. My dad pried the door open, cut the seatbelt, and helped the woman out before the rescue teams arrived. My memory is replete with examples of my father trying to save lives. His oath to protect lives and property was sacred.
Growing up and witnessing my dad’s sentiment toward work was exciting — I looked forward to finding my own dream job! According to what I saw from my father, work could be fun, a calling, something to be passionate about. Going to work could be anticipated with excitement and never dread. Working could be a vocation, something I was called to do, used my talents and gifts, and was therefore good at it. At the very least, work should never feel like a slog and instead could be a delight. I thought if I was curious enough about the world, my vocation would make itself known and I would be set for the rest of my life.
I wanted what my father had at his job — to make the world a better place, to work alongside a team of people who I loved and would (maybe) die for, to feel excitement about going to work, to find joy and satisfaction in it, to have days off during the week so I could pursue hobbies, and to not be stuck in an office, chained to a desk and computer for five days every week.
While this idealistic mindset about work was exciting as a child, as an adult, it’s been both challenging and frustrating. I didn’t realize how rare it is for someone to find a true calling and be able to make a living at it. Since I was a teenager, I’ve been trying — and failing — to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I put a lot of pressure on myself to find my calling and went down every road I could think of to try to uncover this passion lurking somewhere deep inside my being. I read books like What Color is Your Parachute? and The Artist’s Way. I dutifully journaled every morning for years to see if a hidden vocation would appear in my writing — nothing materialized. I meditated to try to hear what my inner voice was saying — mostly I fell asleep. I visualized what it would feel like, sound like, and look like at my dream job — this led to thinking about all the things I would do on my days off. I tried to manifest a high paying job with a kind boss and flexible hours — still nothing. I went on dozens of informational interviews to talk about careers outside of what I knew — all seemed like jobs that were nice for other people but not me.
I tried career counseling three different times. I took aptitude tests. I answered questions like, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? What would you do if money wasn’t a factor? What did you want to be when you grew up?” While interesting exercises, my childhood ambition to enter the convent was not going to help me in my job search.
I tried to focus on work that would contribute to the greater good and spent many working years at nonprofits. When a job became rote, I’d move laterally to see if something else was going to spark my inner flame. When my career in nonprofits felt stale, I opened a paint your own pottery studio with my sister. While working creatively with my sister was a dream job, the lack of stable income was not a dream.
My obsession with finding my calling has left me worried about retirement savings and concerned over how I will afford my children’s college tuitions. What’s ironic about my father finding a job that was a calling is he didn’t have a deep seated yearning to be a fireman. After he graduated from high school, he studied design for a year at the Academy of Aeronautics in Queens but dropped out as he couldn’t afford the tuition. He then worked a variety of construction jobs before he was drafted into the Army and trained to be a surveyor. I only recently learned that before he was drafted, he had taken the tests for both the NYPD and FDNY. In 1950s Catholic schools in the Bronx, the nuns encouraged their students toward stable civil service jobs should the country ever experience another Great Depression. As a result, most of the guys in my dad’s neighborhood were taking those tests so he did too, not because it was his dream to protect lives and property.
The NYPD called first. When my father went for the psych evaluation, he bumped into someone he knew from the Bronx who was already a NYC cop. My dad remarked that he didn’t think he could ever shoot someone (despite achieving the level of sharpshooter in the Army.) After turning down the NYPD, my father was offered a spot in the FDNY and he decided to give it a try. He hadn’t been searching for his calling, an opportunity came his way and he took the job, which turned out to be something he loved.
While I know with certainty my father loved his job, after seeing that photograph of him talking to the reporter, I remembered there were parts of his job he didn’t love and had to endure — talking to reporters was one of them. (I knew he didn’t like talking to reporters when he refused their requests for an interview after he tried to save a woman who was shot across the street from our house in the 1980’s.) I can tell from his countenance that he’s dubious about a question or maybe even annoyed with something the reporter said or asked. Knowing my dad, he would rather be with the other firemen preparing to go back to the firehouse or on his way to the next run. While my dad loved the most significant component of his work — saving lives and property — he merely tolerated the meetings, paperwork, and administrative tasks. The firemen who visited our house after 9/11 joked about how my dad would go to borough wide chiefs meetings with his tie loosely around his neck and his shirt untucked, wearing the required uniform but clearly not happy about it.
Since my father died when I was in my mid-twenties, I had forgotten the parts of his job where he found frustration — a commissioner who garnered a vote of no confidence from the rank and file chiefs, lesser-experienced chiefs (some of whom outranked him due to a voluntary, test based promotion system) who made decisions my father thought were putting lives at risk, and most notably when new, poorly functioning radios had to be pulled for faultiness. My father’s complaints about the radios not working properly proved to be prescient, as the radio failure on 9/11 is well documented.
After decades of worry about finding my dream career, I think I have been putting too much pressure on myself, pressure my father wouldn’t have put on me. I’ve tried to relate these other parts of his attitude toward his job to my own search for meaningful work. It’s taken reflection to reconcile what I knew about him and how he lived with who I am and what I desire. It’s been a journey for me and I am continuing on it. My dad, who found his calling, didn’t love everything about his job — there will always be a component of work that is work, and not fun. My father would praise anyone who had a job where they paid their share of taxes and contributed to the economy. He never pressured me to find my calling or to find work that served others — he just wanted his daughters to be happy.
Though I haven’t found my calling yet, I’m still looking, but I’m not being as hard on myself. I accept it will be good enough to find a job I like most of the time, pays the bills, allows me to eventually pay college tuition for my kids, and doesn’t actively make the world a worse place.
Also, if you’re hiring, I’m available.
