What’s your subject?

What I’m not asking: What’s your topic of interest, research, focus, or specialty?

You might study the B cells in the pancreas in a lab in New Jersey. Great. You may teach lower-level sociology courses at the community college. That’s fine. You might even write romance novels for conservative Christians. Fine.

But those aren’t your subjects. Those are the topics your address for work. They are your “subject matter” at your day job. They fill your time, pay the bills, and keep you employed.

Steven Pressfield says, "Subject is deeper than topic.”

What’s the topic behind the topic? What’s the thing behind the thing, the matter behind the matter, the subject behind the subject. Like a tree’s roots system, because it’s singular and deeper, it's actually much father reaching and more intertwined with other subjects.

B cells? No. But maybe it’s the struggles of being alienated from one’s own body. Or dietary influence on autoimmune disease.

Sociology? No. Perhaps, though, it’s the immagrant struggle of assimilation or urban violence and youth identity.

Christian Romance? Nope. But maybe it’s erotic repression or a theology of sensuality.

From the outside, vocation has topics it “addresses”, but from the inside, vocation usually has one, grounding, perennial subject.

What’s your subject?