I spent a couple hours this week thinking with a friend about how kids (and adults) decide what to do–where to go to college?  What to do for a living?  I reminded me of David Whyte’s work.
Lapoesia (Poem), as David Whyte points out in a Heart Aroused, goes to the heart of calling.  It begins in the unknown and honors the reflective and intuitive.  The willingness to choose, even to appear foolish, opens to community and joy (and melodrama…sorry I’m a sucker for  like big gushing endings).

Poem

And it was at the age…Poetry arrived

in search of me.  I don’t know, I don’t know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don’t know how or when,

no, they were not voice, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names,

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire,

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.

–Pablo Neruda