SINGULAR.

If married, ordained, and professed people witness to something through their commitments, what do vowless singles in their thirties and forties reveal to the world? To what are they called? They must wonder if their state is permanent and what their role in the world is. They have mourned the loss of numerous college friends, with whom they once shared favorite novelists and painters. Now they have become incapable of discussing anything other than diaper sales and car seat studies, closely followed by Little League. Thirty- and fortysomething singles are out of step, and they know it.

Even in mundane details, their lives are different. Unlike my married friends, when I am stricken with a sudden flu in the middle of the night and discover that all the meds in the bathroom cupboard expired during the last Bush administration, there is no one else to make a run to the all-night pharmacy. There is no one to go to the supermarket just before dinner guests arrive to procure the pine nuts I forgot. No one around to hug me after a hard day. No one simply assumes they will be my ride to the airport for a 7 a.m. flight, and usually no one offers outright.

Precisely because there is no one "built in" to accompany singles along the way, friendships are all the more precious. When married friends offer me a place to stay between moves, or rides when my car is in the shop, they probably don't know just how much it means. But even good friends do not go along when one of them gets a new job and moves elsewhere, and friendships rarely survive several relocations. So in the end, we singles move through life alone, grateful for others who share some of it with us. It is a gift.

Maybe that is the witness that single people offer: a reminder that no one else is on exactly the same path, that fundamentally we all experience life distinct from one another, even when blessed with good company, even lifelong company. Singles remind the rest that each person's real identity is not the same as his or her social role. Everyone is more than someone's parent or local priest.

Admittedly, there is comfort in having a clear identity. So singles sometimes take special pride in being a company's promising sales manager, a dedicated teacher, a town's most beloved pediatrician, the world's expert on fishing techniques in Ming China. We are not the only ones to allow career interests a large role in giving life meaning, but we may be more susceptible to this than most. We need a niche.

In a parish it is particularly hard for us to find such a place. There we face constant announcements about the family Christmas Mass, the family Lenten fast program, the Mother's Day carnation sale, the summer family picnic, the Father's Day barbecue, the family hayride outing, and family photo shoots for the parish directory. If you are spotted too often at Bible study or justice committee meetings and seem especially interested, you can be sure that a couple times a year someone will hand you a brochure about some order of nuns. (It's never about a graduate degree for lay ministers.) Like that annoying relative who keeps asking when she can expect a wedding invitation, the clear message is that you should not be single, that you are really pre-something and simply need a nudge.

No wonder career roles seem so important. Everyone wants to feel called, and it's hard to sense a call to something you are by default. If anything, singles sometimes feel like leftovers, like the last ones chosen by the team captains for their grade school gym class.

But why all the talk about "calling" in the first place? After all, so many couples do not seem as if they should be married, or at least not to each other. So many priests or members of religious communities do not appear to be happy and thriving. Were their commitments really God's doing? It seems just possible that, while a select few may be called to something specific, most of us are charged with nothing more (but nothing less) than using our talents wisely and being salt and light for the world. Maybe God's plans for most of us are no more specific than a charge to leaven the loaves we are in.

Anne Marie Wolf is a doctoral candidate in medieval history at the University of Minnesota.