"Let your life Speak" by Parker Palmer. Reaction paper

Parker Palmer’s book is a collection and reflection of his essays and work of his life. It talks mainly about his life experiences and transformation of his vocational journey. It contains the stories of Palmer’s personal struggles to find and define his own purpose in life. These stories demonstrate how readers can stop and look at themselves and all the people around them to see who they really are. His advice to reader is to listen to our lives, and in his book Palmer tells us how he did it and what we can do.
Palmer demonstrated that it is important to understand one’s true self in order to have a happy fulfilling life. Starting from the childhood we all demonstrate our personal interests and compassions. But as we develop we allow our parents, teachers, and society to choose our vocation for us. According to Palmer in most cases it leads to disappointments and failure. He found that the problem lays in the attempt to live a life that was defined by someone else. Filled with wisdom and examples Let your life speak invites reader to listen to the inner self and follow its sense of meaning and purpose.
Presenting his own life as an example Palmer demonstrated how most people go through different stages in life wearing “faces of other people.” (p. 19). When young Palmer was in high school he wanted to “become a naval aviator and then take up a career in advertising.” (p. 13). These were the faces of the people he has seen and admired, and wanted to be like them. Later on in life, with change of the surroundings changed this dream for vocation. After graduating the college young Palmer decided to go to Union Theological Seminary in New York City. At that time he was certain that the ministry was his destiny, as he was certain about becoming a naval pilot and an advertiser few years before that. Step by step he realized that many ways in life that he chose, many turns that he took were wrong. Many people don’t see or recognize the small clues that life presents us with and that we show interest in. Instead we try to be like someone else and manage to project their lives on ours.
Palmer pointed out that the root of the word vocation comes from Latin and means the voice; therefore vocation means to pursue a calling. Palmer presented vocation not as “a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received” (p. 10). And to receive that gift many people go through periods of despair, darkness, and depression. Sometimes it takes many years before one is ready to receive this gift so patience is important.
It is important, according to Palmer, that people realize when we hit the bottom. It is not because of our impeccability but because the path that was chosen had little or nothing at all to do with our true vocation. It is critical to look and see where we can go from there and continue the road to our vocation. The ones who are unable to see the way will most likely fall into the state of depression that Palmer spent many pages talking about. He talked a little about the cause and nature of the depression and used his own experience as an example. Though hereditary and major cases of depression will need medical interventions, others, like situational depression, will require personal strength, faith, hope, and trust to overcome this state, to follow our true vocation, and to become a leader of our own destiny.
Palmer ended his book with a little essay about the leadership. Because all people are interconnected and live in a community he stated that “leadership is everyone’s vocation.” (p. 74). Palmer pointed out that everyone makes their own choices of what they are going to project to help create the world. Some people can project light, some shadows into the lives of others therefore in to our world. In order to project the light Palmer recommended we practice what he calls “inner work.” (p. 91). The inner work includes reading, spiritual friendships, prayers and meditation; and if neglected it will affect the outer work and wise versa.
This small book with a little more than hundred pages opens up the insights, presents the examples, and provides personal feelings that guide the mind of a reader to think about and define a vocation for the self. I believe this book can make a difference in the lives of the young readers, who are just now trying to figure out their purpose in life; and also make young parents pay attention to their kids’ interests. Even people who have already built their career and enjoy their vocation might benefit from this book as it will remind them of their falls and bottoms, and progress and rise.
Using his own life as an example Palmer has been truthful and honest while looking back. This fact encourages the reader to do the same, realistically look at the life and find himself.
I very much like how Let your life speak doesn’t provide us with the step-by-step or how-to instructions to find one’s purpose in life or vocation, it provides the explanation, kind of an over-all preview, of author’s life and other experiences. It makes people stop and think rather than follow specific directions.
But I also think that some solutions, like religious prayers and spiritual meditation, may not satisfy and might even frustrate some readers. This is not the right book for people who want to hear the answers and get clear directions without any additional thinking done.
Parker Palmer has captured one of the most important concepts in life-loving yourself. It is important to understand and love yourself the way you are, to see yourself the way other people see you, and thrive. By judging ourselves and thinking what we have done wrong we only demolish our inner world, making everything seem to be negative and impossible. Instead we have to look for the ways to benefit ourselves, the community and the world.
The problem that I found with the book, or maybe even the author, is the financial state of happiness versus spiritual. The author comes from a financially stable family, has PhD and does not have any difficulties in terms of finances. His journey, even though is very interesting, can hardly be equal to the one of a middle-class person who makes career choices based on a need to earn a living. It’s not always possible to find the place where what we like to do is desperately needed in society.
In the world we live in people choose financial stability over spiritual happiness and satisfaction. This is something they have thought about and made their decision. This is the choice they have decided to project to the world and they can always rethink it.