In this post, Jason Mahn expresses feelings of frustration and burnout amid challenges in teaching, which include lack of student engagement, prison lockdowns disrupting classes, and international students facing visa issues. Drawing on Albert Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Mahn reflects on the gap between ideals and reality, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging despair while fostering hope.
My work as an educator has felt Sisyphean of late. Just this past week, I’ve experienced some acute frustration and setbacks, not to mention an overarching sense of fatigue, ineffectuality, and even cynicism.
Monday afternoon, I found myself walking up the stairwell toward my classroom remembering the apathy in the students’ faces the prior week. I was dreading another session during which I would try—too hard!—to be and sound excited and engaged. I stopped and mumbled aloud to myself: “I don’t want to be here.”
The certainty of death and taxes, famously noted by Benjamin Franklin, is challenged by modern realities. Wealth disparities skew tax compliance, while transhumanists envision overcoming mortality. Authors Burkeman and Beal argue that confronting our finitude enriches lives. Ultimately, recognizing life’s limits prompts meaningful existence and societal responsibility.
When Benjamin Franklin popularized this saying in 1789, he was referring to the new American Constitution, which he believed shouldn’t be considered certain or permanent, at least not without the active participation and vigilance of its citizens—a republic, he suggested, if we can keep it. Absolutely nothing is certain—not even the bedrock of our nation’s democracy—except for death and taxes.
The piece discusses the concerns of independent colleges regarding the new administration’s impact on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). It critiques political leaders’ claims of divine sanction for their actions, drawing on Kierkegaard’s existentialist views which emphasize ambiguity in calling. The author advocates for humility and reflection in understanding vocation.
There are a number of reasons why those of us who educate for vocation at independent colleges and universities are acutely concerned about the start of the new administration. First and foremost, attacks on DEI are rattling those committed to making college education and purposeful work available to all. While private institutions arguably have more protection than public ones, they’re not immune from federal attacks or statewide measures that follow. The slipshod firing of federal workers also sends shivers among public servants, many of whom chose governmental work out of a sense of calling; that is, because they “want to serve the public” and are “motivated by their desire to make the world a better place.”
Equally troubling is the fact that so many government officials have ordained their own work in terms of a higher calling, or a mission sent by God, even as they disrupt the more modest callings of others. At both the state and federal levels, politicians have repeatedly interpreted their electoral victories (many of which have been quite narrow) as a clear mandate to slash jobs, overhaul governmental bureaucracy, and attack higher education. We should be skeptical about declarations that elected (or unelected) officials have been “saved by God” or are doing “God’s work.” Even without explicit self-ordinations, we should be critical—and resistant—anytime a leader or party enacts “creative destruction” with all the certainty, zeal, and sanction of the God-Chosen.
The term “voxistential” blends “existential” with “vocation,” highlighting the need for meaning-making in life. It critiques the oversimplification of both concepts in popular culture and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the dark sides of calling, exploring the interplay of hardship and authenticity within vocational reflection, as discussed by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore.
Yes, I’m trying to coin a new word. Googling “voxistential” will only take you to definitions of “existential” and maybe to a 2019 article from the magazine Vox about whether climate change is an existential threat. But I’m taking a cue from my oldest son who made up the word “crenescence” a couple years ago and used it casually around the high school lunch table just to see if it would catch on. (The word allegedly meant something like the opposite of irony, but not quite the same as coincidence. And no, it never caught on.)
By “voxistential” I mean to bring together “existential” and “vocation,” from vocare, “to call,” and the Latin root vōx, meaning “voice.” Traditionally, both words point to a similar idea—namely, that a person needs to find or make meaning and purpose, especially when life doesn’t hand them ready-made answers or pre-cut patterns. The meanings of the words have drifted apart in recent years, perhaps because we have overused each one. Recently, though, wise scholars like Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, author of Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies About Calling, are reviving existential questions within vocational reflection.
