Book Review: Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work by Dave Isay

Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work by Dave Isay

Rating: ★★★★☆

I first heard of David Isay in the On Being podcast, where he was interviewed by the host Ms. Krista Tippett in “Listening as an Act of Love”. I discovered that Isay is the founder of StoryCorps, an organization dedicated to recording and sharing the stories of people from all walks of life. (I don’t live in the U.S., and I’m a bit of a hermit from social media, so it’s still pretty new to me.) I was moved by the podcast, so after I listened to the episode, I checked out StoryCorps and their available publications.

In the end, I gravitated to Callings for a very personal reason. At the time I picked it up, I found myself stuck in a job that was no longer fulfilling, while my Facebook feed (before I’d stopped going on it altogether) seemed to feature a lot of successful young entrepreneurs, or else my peers who’d inherited the family business and were currently living it up by travelling the world. I was lost and tired and I guess I was looking for permission to have a vision for myself that didn’t involve this monolithic definition of success. So Callings was exactly what I needed.

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