Meaningful Work
For a second, good news doesn’t feel so good when you can’t share it with the someone you want to share it with the most. Today would have been my dad’s 73rd birthday. And I’m feeling deeply connected to him in this time of transition and revelation.
Claude S. Stevens (1948 – 2012)
I’ve been soul-searching for the last few months, at first on my own and then with professional support. We’ve been exploring the mechanics of grief and its impact on the way I live my life. We’ve also been tapping into memory and the mangled emotions that go along with a significant loss. Coming home to Virginia now kind of feels like a punctuation; not a period but something furthering. After grappling with heavy emotions that I’d swept under the rug for the last 9 years, the demons finally loosen their grip. My heart is open in ways it’s never been and all the memories have begun to fill the void that was left after such a significant loss; comforting me, challenging me, and expanding me.
In this spiritual awakening, one of the questions that was left was about meaningfulness, impact, and purpose in work. Throughout my time with my dad, he was searching for meaning in the last bit of his career. I can recall him and my mom reading and studying Purpose Driven Life as he swam through nonprofit communities helping to create order and strategy in their work. He worked with a group of formerly incarcerated persons in Richmond’s Highland Park community; he continued his service in education as a beloved adjunct at J. Sergeant Reynolds Community College. At the very end, he worked for Support One, dedicated to maintaining stability for differently abled communities throughout the city of Richmond. And so, I find myself at a crossroads I imagine he encountered, interrogating the same questions that he left unanswered and continuing the same passion-driven journey that he started for purpose and meaning in work.
This time last year I was celebrating the accomplishment and milestone of completing my master’s program, it was also the first time I stepped off the deliberate path of academic training. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have clear-cut instructions for what to do next. In that liminal space, I’ve been in search of clarity, purpose, and assignment; all things that my dad was exploring as he made a huge transition in his career. His memoir, Imagine That, recounts some of that journey. I can hardly turn the pages without being flooded by his spirit, dancing around my fingers as they follow his words on the written page. It captures the joys he found in meaningful work after 30 years of institutional work experience. He writes, “There’s nothing like meaningful work where there is opportunity to really make a difference…for real, for real. We all can make it happen. It’s only too late if we don’t start now, use what we have…our gifts and talents. Do something, no matter how small it seems to you. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step.”
I feel so empowered reading his words (imbued with those of Arthur Ashe and Lao Tzu) as I prepare to take my next steps in finding meaning and purpose in my work. Next month, I start a new job working at Carta as the Associate DEI Manager. I’m delighted that my academic work, professional aspirations, and personal beliefs have aligned in such an amazing opportunity. I have high hopes for the work and believe that by joining the team at Carta I will begin a long journey in creating transformational and meaningful change.
I’ve had so many allies and well-wishers, friends, mentors and sponsors along the way and I can’t help but think too of all the amazing conversations me and my dad won’t get to have in the flesh. Even though the sadness of the loss is always there, my capacity to hold the grief and hope in the same space has grown too. Our conversations in the spirit have given light in unimaginable ways. To commune with the feelings and memories of him, in the spaces he used to fill has a deeper impact than any face to face encounter ever could. Imagine that! He speaks through signs and wonders, helping me to understand how much of him I carry everyday. I feel that I’ve picked up his mantle, following his quest for meaning “and other zetetical pursuits.”
