Write My Map Reflection: Weeks 3 & 4
This part of Write My Map has been about exploring mission, specifically our own missions. And as I was writing in response and reflection to the prompts, I couldn’t help but also reflect on how my understanding of mission has changed over the years.
When I was a kid, I heard about missions all the time. The way everybody talked about mission made me believe that missions were something we were tasked to do because we were part of a certain group. And as I grew up and learned more about what a mission actually is, I realize that is only part of the picture. I have examined so many mission statements over my career, and a lot of emphasis is placed on doing things with a purpose because of a vision a business, organization, or group of people have. Don’t get me wrong, having a mission, and a purpose, and a vision for things is great. It just felt…like an overwhelming performance to try and pass some kind of test.
It wasn’t until well into my adulthood that I began to understand that mission has something to do with what I believe and isn’t a test. As I dug in over the years I have come to understand mission in multifaceted ways, and I developed my own mission statement. Having my own mission has helped me a lot, not just in being a kind of statement about what I believe and what I feel my purpose is, but also because it helps me focus my energy.
In all my time on this earth, mission has been talked about as a static thing. “We exist to _____,” the vision may change sometimes but the mission, the purpose or the “why,” is the same. Almost as if the mission wasn’t the same, everything would fall apart because the identity would be lost. It wasn’t until last year when I came to the understanding that a person’s mission, just like a company or an organization’s mission, should be updated periodically.
Mission is something someone, or a group of someone’s, takes on because of their own identities and beliefs. A mission draws people for whom the mission resonates into its presence and gives them something to do or a way to behave. “Why” has a way of changing and shifting and refining over time, very often the concluding why becomes unrecognizable from its beginning point. And while sometimes this is because of mismanagement or uncouth characters signing onto a mission and driving it full speed in a direction opposite to its intent… A mission isn’t meant to be ongoing in perpetuity. By their very nature, all missions are meant to conclude in some way, shape, or form. But that is not how we typically view, or even use, the idea of mission.
Vu, the brilliant writer behind NonprofitAF, wrote a post once about how we need to start being okay with laying some missions and nonprofits to rest. I can’t find the post specifically right now, but that piece has stuck with me. Not everything is meant to live forever, even when it means something to us.
Who I am, what I have experienced, what I have learned, and what I believe is what helps me to understand and define my mission, or my “why.” What I believe, why I am here, that should drive what I do and should help me focus where I grow and the work I have to do on myself.
Anyway.
I think of mission now as a complex living web, more than a static statement. If I am doing things right, I will grow and evolve and not be the same person I am now in the next year. Why would my mission be the same for the rest of my life?
Back again soon with more reflections…