That favorite campfire dessert, S’mores, get their name from “Some more”, as in “I want some more”. This term can apply to our career and our life as well as our dessert. Each person is born with certain gifts, talents and proclivities. Our inner compass encourages us to use these gifts, talents, and proclivities. When we do so, we find that life is easier, work is more productive. We are more at peace, and we find that we can sustain this for the long term. We can hear ourselves saying, “This isn’t work; I would do this for free!” We want “some more”.

Conversely, when we ignore our gifts, talents, and proclivities, we pay in subtle and not-so-subtle ways – higher stress, lower productivity, depression, burning out. The good news is that we can continually choose which life we live – ours, or somebody else’s opinion of what our life “should” be.

When we’re younger, we let others guide us to college (or not), career, marriage (or not), which city/town to live in, etc. We are so conditioned from early childhood to listen to other people’s opinions about who we are and what we should be doing, that we have difficulty discerning who we are called to be.

To have the S’mores experience, we need to learn to listen to and to follow our inner compass. William Stafford echoes these thoughts in his poem Ask Me, “Ask me whether what I have done is my life.”

Are you “wanting some more”? Are you “doing your life”? If not, how can you choose to do so?

Gary Langenwalter