“Called to Greatness”

by Dr. Larry Morris

Andrés Segovia once said that he became interested in the guitar when he was eight years old. "One day a man walked by me on the street playing a guitar. He put my fingers on the strings and I played, not as if I were learning but as if I were remembering." When we discover our right thing to do in this life, it's indeed not like learning but as if we were remembering something we once knew and had somehow forgotten. The activity fits us so well, it's as if it's a natural extension of ourselves. A true artist doesn't take a vow to pursue his art at all costs. He is this art. It is something he no longer has to think about. He would as soon not breathe as not create. Anyone who finds this true calling in life ceases to be just a human personality—like a Gandhi or a Mother Teresa—he no longer lives for himself but as the expression of his destiny. So with each one of us: as we each discover the gift within ourselves that we are here to share with this world, we become that gift. As Gerald Manley Hopkins wrote:  "What I do is who I am - this is what I've come for."