Week 45 · modern

Parker Palmer

Parker Palmer spent years as a successful academic before realizing he was living someone else's life. He was doing what he was supposed to do, not what he was called to do. A breakdown in his forties (including clinical depression) forced him to ask, "What is my life actually asking of me?" He spent the next three decades helping teachers, leaders, and ordinary people answer that question for themselves.

“"Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am." He wrote that in Let Your Life Speak. He was 50 when he figured out that listening comes before choosing.”