on Vocation

What is my life's work?

This word: Vocation

According to wikipedia:
"A vocation (Latin vocātiō - a call, summons) is an occupation to which a person is specially drawn or for which he or she is suited, trained, or qualified. Though now often used in non-religious contexts, the meanings of the term originated in Christianity."

I am expressing this curiousity...

What is my life's work? What "occupation" am I drawn to for which I am (uniquely?) suited, trained or qualified?

To what extent am I already doing my life's work? To what extent am I already being financially compensated for what I am doing? To what extent is financial compensation important as part of the definition of "legitimate" vocation?

If my material needs are being met, then what else is there left? To what extent are concerns about an abstract future in which I am completely and utterly reliant on resources acquired and amassed from my own labour playing a part in how I think of work and vocation?

Here are some...:

Vocation is about friendship, justice, creativity, healing woundedness, catalysing knowledges which begin from wholeness (i.e. "I was / We were never really wounded")

Vocation is about...

completing unfinished business, with grace, mindful attention, flexibility, patience...

The unfinished business of the ills unleashed by colonialism, capitalism

Vocation is meditation & washing dishes

Vocation is every moment as "free time", time freely used to do whatever it is that I am doing, not doing whatever it is that I am not doing, being whoever it is I am being, and not being whoever it is that I am not being.

Vocation is in education, exploration, learning

Vocation is on unlearning, keeping still

Vocation is also all the icky stuff:

Impatience, annoyance, anger, betrayals, disappointments

Vocation is the work in integrating all these 

(and seeing, perhaps, how they are already perfect articulations of that which is already integrated).

Vocation, my life's work... Is vocation a luxury?

I am a religious man, sometimes... Religious, intentionally, triggering revolt from my Rational-Atheist self that decries New Age nonsense (and is sometimes femme-phobic, averse to colour, desperately fearful of mistake, conflating all error with utter failure)


I want to start a Business...
My Business is already started! I am in the middle of my daily business, it is none of your business, it is All of your business.

My business is partially allowing deepening, broadening awareness of all the business of the world, and about knowing my capacities and limitations, knowing what is possible and not-yet possible, seeing the arbitrariness of these impositions, and then choosing to act anyway. Or not act. Or assisting others in acting.


So here:

Vocation is:
Availability as an assistant.
A catalyst.

Balancing the fine tipping-point line between innovation and tradition.
Assisting others in their already-excellent work.

Vocation is:
Pouring tea,
putting labels on envelopes,
calling a friend, saying
"I don't know, what do you think?"

Say my name, say my name

Reading this post in PERIL, linked to on a previous post by shinenigan, got me thinking more about something that happened to me yesterday.

A friend (and colleague) and I were talking about the many situations in which schools will allow a student to informally change their name, without having to go through some process of filling out forms and getting approved by the school bureaucracy (or even more burdensome, having to go to court to get an order of name change).

This was in the context of making the case that if schools allowed students to easily change their names, they should not be singling out transgender or gender non-conforming students for especially burdensome name-change requirements when they requested to be called by their preferred name.

As some background, my colleague is White. We were talking with another attorney who was Chinese (like me). My colleague and I were quickly listing the contexts in which non-transgender students might ask for, and routinely get, an informal name change: in the case of a divorce, a student might change their last name to the custodial parent's; a student might prefer to use their middle name; a student might prefer to use an abbreviation of their full name (e.g., John instead of Jonathan, Nick instead of Nicholas). Then my colleague added that a student with a non-Anglo name might choose to take on an Anglo name.

This brought me up short. I was a little stunned, to be honest. I don't think that my colleague was intending to bring up the entire background of "othering," of Asian people feeling never quite at home in a country (indeed, because of colonization, a world) full of Anglo names. I wanted to say: let's be clear - informally taking on an Anglo name is not a preference, it is almost necessarily a (somewhat bitter) compromise. The deal is: I'll take on a less "foreign" sounding name, and you accept me as fully a member of this school community. Unfortunately, of course, since racism persists (yes! even among schoolchildren!), the deal is never made good on.

Anyway, that's sort of what was running through my head, but I didn't say anything at the time. Partly because I didn't feel that strongly about it right then (or am I numb to the pain of racism?), and partly because I didn't want to get into a whole discussion about it at the time (it was lunch!). Today, I decided to send an email to my friend about it. Here's what I wrote:

I just wanted to drop you a note about one of the examples you used when we were talking informally . . . about situations in which students get a school to acknowledge and respect a preferred name. You gave as one example that some students with non-Anglo names would adopt a name that's easier for people to say. I totally agree that this is a not uncommon practice, and that you are right that many teachers probably are almost even relieved to make the switch to the more Anglo name, but I wanted to let you know that it brought up the whole history of racism and xenophobia in this country for me.I didn't feel THAT strongly about it at the time (or I would have told you right away, of course!), but it did make me somewhat uneasy, and when I was thinking about this later, I thought I'd let you know. Part of me feels like, even though it's actually a great example of a common reason for students to use a preferred name over the name given at birth, that it risks bringing up that whole history for someone in the room. We were talking about it informally in a small circle of friends, so that was obviously less risky!However, I think that if we use this example in public (and I kind of want to at some point), we should acknowledge that part of what's going on there is a kind of compromise with a racist society, and that this is something people of color do all the time to have some safety or to not constantly be overtly "othered". I'm sure there's some less "heavy" way to acknowledge that, of course, and would love to get your ideas.I thought that you did a great job acknowledging a related issue with gender identity and medical intervention (that some trans people decide not to change their bodies in a particular socially-prescribed way, acknowledging that it's society that has a problem with their bodies, not them, and that all people deserve respect for their gender identity whatever medical intervention they have or have not had).

Global Woman ... and some Thoughts on Work

Today, I went to the Melbourne City Library and borrowed
  Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy 
edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild

So far, it has been an absolutely excellent read. The book is a compilation of essays covering the issues of mass migration of women from poor countries to rich countries to fill in what Ehrenreich and Hochschild call the "care deficit"...




Care Deficit?

In summary, many of the 'gains' and 'successes' of materialist feminism in wealthy, "Western," industrialised countries have revolved around the 'rights' of women within public and paid professional spheres, in other words, in spheres typically more traditionally demarcated as 'male' (rights of citizenship, rights of property ownership, etc.). While this increase in access and opportunity has meant greater/increasing economic equality (in public spheres) for women citizens, this has not been correlated with as sharp an increase, particularly in late capitalist feminism dominated by bourgeois interests, in an incentive to prioritise and politicise the importance of domestic labour.

This means a lot of the roles historically fulfilled by women, in general and in particular, domestic & caretaker roles, are now being filled, in particular, by migrant women.

In the first essay of the book, "Love and Gold," Hoschschild says it best:

"Women who want to succeed in a professional or managerial job in the First World [sic]... face strong pressures at work. Most careers are still based on a well-known (male) pattern: doing professional work, competing with fellow professionals, getting credit for work, building a reputation, doing it while you are young, hoarding scarce time, and minimizing family work by finding someone else to do it. In the past, the professional was a man; the 'someone else' was his wife. The wife oversaw the family, itself a flexible, preindustrial institution concerned with human experiences the workplace excluded: birth, child rearing, sickness, death. Today, a growing 'care industry' has stepped into the traditional wife's role, creating a very real demand for migrant women.


But if First World [sic] middle-class women are building careers that are molded according to the old male model, by putting in long hours at demanding jobs, their nannies and other domestic workers suffer a greatly exaggerated version of the same thing. Two women working for pay is not a bad idea. But two working mothers giving their all to work is a good idea gone haywire. In the end, both First and Third World [sic] women are small players in a larger economic game whose rules they have not written."


Elsewhere, Ehrenreich and Hochschild mention that this gap has certainly not been narrowed by any significant increase in involvement (within the domestic sphere) of men. After all, there is a huge economic disincentive for individuals socialised within so-called "First World" settings to participate in labour that is not only financially uncompensated, but also socially undervalued. This may be experienced as especially 'disenfranchising' for men who have especially vested interests in holding on to the privilege of access to and association with paid, public, professional worlds. Men may experience both deeply internalised and socio-cultural pressures to dissociate from spheres of experience which have been historically feminised and constructed as belonging to women.

Hochschild writes:
"...when the unpaid work of raising a child became the paid work of child-care workers, its low market value revealed the abidingly low value of caring work generally -  and further lowered it...
Just as the marker price of primary produce keeps the Third World low in the community of nations, so the low market value of care keeps the status of the women who do it - and ultimately all women - low..."


One notable exception to this trend has been Norway:

"One excellent way to raise the value of care is to involve fathers in it. If men shared the care of family members worldwide, care would spread laterally instead of being passed down a social class ladder. In Norway, for example, all employed men are eligible for a year's paternity leave at 90 percent pay. Some 80 percent of Norwegian men now take over a month of paternal leave. In this way, Norway is a model to the world. For indeed it is men who have for the most part stepped aside from caring work, and it is with them that the 'care drain' truly begins."






Caring As My Political Act

I am reflecting on the fact that I have been participating, for the most part of my professional life, in the community sector, particularly for the GLBT community. As a man, I have not necessarily consciously thought of this as a particularly feminist or even pro-feminist act. Yet, clearly coming from my undergraduate academic background in gender studies, it was no surprise to me to learn that this industry is not only typically feminised (a workforce disproportionately composed of women), but historically undervalued and underpaid as well.

I am excited about recent developments in Australia, where several unions within the community sector, particularly the Australian Services Union (ASU) have fought for, and recently won, an Equal Pay increase of between 19% - 41% for all community sector workers, which is to be phased in over the next 8 years. This is a landmark Federal ruling, which makes a huge difference in rectifying the problem of the gender pay gap.

I believe that this will have positive implications for all of us. It will allow community sector workers not only to have more economic agency, but it also is a powerful cultural statement about the value of caring work in this country.

I believe this also means that we are far more likely to achieve the outcome of increased incentive to do part-time public work (either for those of us who have had 'too little' work, constructed as 'unemployed' or 'underemployed,' or for those of us who have 'too much' work, typically people with 'full time,' 40 - 50 hour-a-week jobs). Part-time work, with increased pay within carer/community-/social work sectors, is far more likely to be financially sustainable while one is also trying to run a household (with its domestic duties), whether alone or in a shared household.

Ideally, this would free women (and men) in these sectors to pursue other more personal and domestic aspirations (family, self-care, etc.), and not perpetuate the cycle of the 'care deficit' which has been part and parcel of the problem of global inequity...

Oh this white elephant of an unfinished, late-capitalist feminist project, of which the hiring of oft-exploited migrant workers has been but one symptom.

Growing up Middle Class in Singapore - Part 2

Work/Merit

I received various messages about the purpose and nature of work when I was growing up. One important idea was that work could, and should, be meaningful. It could be challenging, interesting, and, importantly, make a difference in the world. "When you grow up, you need to make a mark," my father would say to me, as a way of motivating me to study harder, or to try to get into a "top" school.

Which brings me to a second set of messages about work - that personal responsibility mattered, meritocracy prevailed and that this was a good thing. I learned that if somehow you failed to get meaningful work, that it was your own fault for not trying hard enough. This fit well with the idea that the world should (and did) reward merit, and punished mediocrity, and that this system was a good one. Along with that was the idea that merit could be measured relatively objectively, and was separate from "politics," as in office politics, which both my parents, to my recollection, spoke of in disparaging terms.

My parents did acknowledge that some people did not have the same opportunities as others to succeed under the existing system, but the solution was to give them those opportunities while maintaining the meritocracy. In other words, to make the system more meritocratic, and minimize what I think they thought of as accidents of birth. Both my parents had gone to college in the U.S. on scholarships, and my father, especially, was very grateful for having had the opportunity to do so.

As a child raised for most of my life in the middle class, I was told that I had every opportunity, and that, if I failed to take advantage, and to make something of myself, I had nobody but myself to blame if I ended up... someplace bad. It was never said explicitly in our nuclear household - I think both my parents were too liberal to repeat the cliched Singaporean/Malaysian warning that if I didn't work hard, I would end up a roadsweeper - but I think that this unspoken (unspeakable?) fear was of ending up in poverty or working a "mindless" job, or both - to become somebody to pity and/or despise.

I internalized this message strongly. At the age of about nine or ten, a partner at my father's law firm who was visiting from the U.S. asked me what I thought of affirmative action, and explained (inaccurately, and certainly incompletely) that it was a system of giving preference to candidates for colleges based on race. I immediately jumped at the opportunity to trumpet my meritocratic ideals, and emphatically denounced such a system. This drew some delighted laughter from the visitor. I don't know what his intention was in asking such a question of a child, and I don't know what impact my answer had on my parents, both of whom had attended college in the U.S. as Asian people in the 70s and may have themselves benefited from race-based affirmative action, whether they knew it or not. If they objected to my answer, they held their tongues.

I also learned how to wield these ideas as weapons. Once, upset at my father for lecturing me about some bad grade or other, I threw the idea of meaningful work being the reward for industriousness back in his face. "What change in the world does your job accomplish?" I spat, "you're just a lawyer who helps companies make a lot of money!" In essence, I was questioning his credentials - who are you to tell me how to live my life, when you have a job that doesn't measure up?

Both my parents were professionals with prestigious advanced degrees. My mother was a professor of science, having received her higher education in the U.S. and the UK. Most of her career was at the National University of Singapore. My father got his education also in the U.S. and UK, taught in a University for a while, then returned to University in the UK for a law degree, and became a lawyer. He worked for most of his career with a large firm.

I idolized my parents for their intelligence and hard work. In the universe of possible meaningful future careers, academic and lawyer were pretty much at the top of my list. They still are today.

Rarely did my parents talk about how difficult it was to make their way through college as foreign students who had been raised working class and poor. I think that doing so would have threatened both the idea that the world was at least relatively meritocratic, and that there were neutral standards of merit out there. However, there are a few memories that stand out from my childhood as a clue to how hard it was for my parents.

My mother once told me how hard it was for her to leave home. It was strange to her to think of there being a "good" school so far away. She did not know how to decide which schools were good or not. Once she had been accepted to the school of her choice, her mother, my Amah, objected strenuously to her leaving - from her point of view, she was losing her daughter, and for what? My Ah Kong, my mother's father, however, was a teacher, and supported my mother's desire to get a good education. My mother ended up going to that school and now, as an alum, helps to recruit and interview young women in Singapore and Malaysia for her alma mater.

My father would sometimes allude to the racism of white people, specifically certain partners in his law firm (this was before he made partner himself), and professors in the US and UK. "They think they're smarter than me just because they're white," he said. He told me he had to work much harder, and be much smarter, than his white counterparts, just to prove he belonged, and deserved to be there. Even after he made partner, he told me, some white partners in the firm would treat him with condescension and hostility, especially refusing to credit him for his ideas for directions the firm should take.

As I reflect on work now, I want to hold on to the idea that work can be meaningful, but let go of the idea that there is a hierarchy of work, that only certain people (hardworking, smart people) deserve to do meaningful work, and that anyone who works at a job they dislike does so because they didn't try hard enough or weren't smart enough to do anything else. It is very difficult to let go of this idea, however. Not only was I raised with it, but it is constantly reinforced now. It's an easy thing to fall back on too, when my ego is shaken by the daily indignities of living in this society - I may have it bad, but at least I'm smart enough to not be working at that guy's job.

It is important, as a mainly raised middle-class child, that I did still get some glimpses of my parents' insights and experiences from being raised poor and working-class, even if they came with a heady chaser of meritocratic ideology. I think that I would also like to talk with them more about their experiences becoming middle-class, especially to see if they feel like they have lost something in the process. I know that I feel a sense of loss having left Singapore to come to the U.S., in order to go to a "good" school, and then "make it" in a major center of capitalist power.