January 2006 / So, how many of you have kept up with your new year's resolutions? That's what I thought. Forget about them, I have a better way. We should write our own mission statement and update it every year. An exercise I learned in Life Management class last year. You figure out what you want out of life, what you want to change about you, your philosophy, then write up a mission statement. Be specific. Be creative. And have the integrity to honor it.
Time Magazine had an article that mentioned the THREE BIG QUESTIONS by the financial planner George Kinder. He advises his clients according to how they answer.
1. Assume that you've got all the money you need, what would you do with it? How would you live?
2. You go to the doctor, who discovers you have a rare illness. He says that you're going to feel perfectly fine for the next five years, but then the illness will prove fatal. It will come suddenly, causing no suffering. The question is, Now that you know that your life will be over by then, how will you live it? What will you do?
3. You go to the doctor. You feel perfectly healthy. Again the doctor explains that you have a serious illness. But this time the doctor says, "You have only 24 hours to live." What did you miss? Who did you not get to be? What did you not get to do?
Kinder said the key is in the last answer. I agree. Last year, my mission statement was a page long. This year, I shortened it quite considerably.
My Mission Statement: I want to have an elegant life. I will live with dignity, courage, passion, and compassion. I will embrace my imperfections. (Hey, live with what you have, right?) I will connect with God/Nature. I will develop a sense of humor ( since I've already had my sense of drama and irony and even tragedy!). I will have different perspectives. (This I'm quite good at, actually. Peter Jennings, the news anchor, once said: There is no one truth for everyone. Every time I look at a coin, I instinctively want to look at the other side. Me too.) And I will learn to enjoy the moments.
I enjoyed reading the two books by Sharon Shinn tremendously. Her fantasy world where angels and humans live together, and have sex (!) was so fun to read. She reflects her point of view on the Muslims as well. In her novels, they are the Jansai who oppress their women. Muslims, by the way, believe that there is sex in Heaven. If you behave yourself, you'll be rewarded by having sex with lots of virgins, and you can drink from rivers of wine, milk, nectars, and such. Men and women alike. (Well, if you lived in the desert long enough, your concept of Heaven would be similar, I think.) They also believe that on their shoulders are two angels, one who records bad deeds, the other good deeds. And women showing their hair is a form of nudity. Yet, there should be balance on Earth that way, extreme views, extreme behaviors. That's how the machinery of the universe works. Where you fit in and what you want to learn depend on opposing forces. And really, Islam has some beautiful concepts. Such as fasting, to remind you that there are hungry people out there. Or the pilgrimage, the hajj, where everyone wears the same simple white attire (or rather, the men wear them) to stress equality among men. And this one I especially like. You know that Muslims do not worship idols and so the decorations are usually geometric patterns. However, when they make a rug or paint the wall or whatever, they would make a small mistake on purpose. The philosophy is that only Allah (God) is perfect. See, they embrace imperfections as well as I do.
Write you mission statement. Right now, okay? ;-)
