Back in elementary school I wanted to be an astronaut — along with many other kids who’d watched the moon landing on TV. Even as late as my last year of high school, any kind of career involving science was where I saw myself digging for rocks or finding life on other worlds, designing skyscrapers and bridges. Anything at all attracted me, so long as it involved laboratories or was mechanical.

But I’m a college professor in the humanities, so obviously that career in science didn’t work out. Instead, the reading of stories led to the teaching of stories. And now I’m trying to write them.

It’s something I’ve come to see as a question of vocation, but not necessarily how I found one. It’s more like how one found me.

The Latin word “vocatio” means “calling” (as in called by God) and used to refer primarily to careers in the church; the priest asks the boy or the girl about discerning vocations as priests or nuns. But among the other changes Martin Luther instigated a few hundred years back was the meaning of vocation. He insisted that it related to everybody, not just church people. In his view all humans, in and out of the church, are “called” by God to be … something.

So, if we follow Luther’s lead, and hear God — or the universe or the community — calling us to do something with our lives, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to only looking at the work that we get paid to do, or even the work that we choose to do.

Vocations are also roles we don’t choose, roles that we inherit by birth or geography. All of us are born into some: son or daughter, citizen. And most of us are brothers, sisters, parents, spouses, and friends as well. Understanding these relationships as vocations means taking on those roles honestly and embracing the tasks — washing the dishes, voting and paying taxes, listening patiently — we “inherit” because of this role.

When we do think of our vocations as roles we choose, it can be “work” for which we get paid, or something we do without compensation. And whether we see ourselves called to be a plumber or a professor doesn’t really matter. Seeing our work as a vocation means that it energizes us and helps us make a difference in the world, either locally or globally or both. It’s about when what we love to do meets what the world most needs us to be doing. So even though we need money to take care of our basic needs, our vocation is not about the money because whatever we’re doing is something we would do even if we weren’t getting paid for it. We love the work.

So what about my choices over the years? How are they a suitable illustration of this concept? As a child, I wanted to be whatever caught my attention that week. As an adult, however, as I considered what I wanted to be, there was always a “still, small voice” whispering what I should be. What did the world need me to be? How could I make a difference? And at the same time this inner voice also reminded me about what I loved to be doing, what kinds of “jobs” energized instead of exhausted me.

Vocation, moreover, is more fluid than solid, frequently changing as our lives change, as our communities change. Once upon a time my vocation was to be a kid in a family, to read books, to do my chores, to prepare for a life away from my mother’s house. When I got married, I took on the role of husband, and after a few years as a teacher, I became a stay-at-home father, raising three kids, cooking meals, washing clothes — giving my energy to help launch those other lives into lives away from my house.

Now those kids are nearly grown up, and so my parenting has shifted into a less intrusive, less hands-on mode. And other things have risen up, like writing and more teaching.

All of my vocations — parent, teacher, writer — have helped connect me to others, which is an important part of the concept, I think. Anything we do to make a difference for the better connects us to others and helps build stronger human communities. In the end, it’s only partly about “me”; it’s mostly about “we.”

David Rask Behling teaches at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, and lives with his wife and children in Albert Lea. His column appears every other Tuesday.