What does it mean to have a vocation? The term gets batted around both in religious and secular circles, and everyone assumes its meaning is clear. Is it? What’s a vocation? Carl Jung defined it this way: “A vocation is an irrational factor that destines a man to emancipate himself from the herd and from its well-worn paths.” Frederick Buechner, a famed preacher, said: “A vocation is where your deep gladness meets the world’s hunger.” David Brooks, a renowned journalist, reflecting on vocation in his recent book, The Second Mountain, gives us these quotes from Jung and Buechner and then writes: “A vocation is not something you choose. It chooses you. When you sense it as a possibility in your life, you also sense that you don’t have a choice but can only ask yourself: What’s my responsibility here? It’s not a matter of what you expect from life but rather what life expects from you.” Moreover, for Brooks, once you have a sense of your vocation it becomes unthinkable to turn away and you realise you would be morally culpable if you did. He quotes William Wordsworth in support of this: