Re: Mission

from the catchmydrift.blog archives

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it.” Says the self-destructing audio tape given to agent Jim Phelps at the beginning of the television show, Mission Impossible.

It was one of my favourite shows as a kid. I loved all things relating to adventure. I loved drawing detailed maps in elementary school of early explorers: Magellan, Vasco de Gama, Shackleton, Cook. I remember being fascinated by the twin tales of Stanley and Livingston: Reporter Henry Stanley was sent on a mission by his newspaper, The New York Herald, in 1871, to find the presumed missing missionary David Livingston.

In the Kama Sutra of sexual positions, ‘missionary style’ (male dominant facing female) is reported to have been promoted by white African missionaries as the acceptable way for natives to procreate. This sexual act offers the promise of creation; a mission by two people to provide an individual to further the continuation of humanity. A lofty mission that has had many motives and several potential outcomes.

Most corporations, of the business sort, have well defined mission statements. The intention of the mission mantra is to focus investor imagination and provide a set of achievable goals. I worked with school principals in the eighties when societal managers were hungry to adopt a business model of operations. We were advised to see an educated student as our product so therefore could create a mission document focussed on that outcome. I fear our children’s education will become even more like an assembly line process as we move ever closer to the merging of biology with AI technology

During my career, I met many colleagues who considered education as their mission in life. For me, however, my job was not the singularity of my life. I would never have referred to my work in schools as a calling. Some people do seem born to do what they do. Recent films about Fred Rogers suggest that his teaching about love and acceptance rose to the level of a mission. In the final scene of A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, Mr. Rogers is shown at a piano while other crew members of his children’s show are packing up to go home, their job finished.

Missionaries bring a message to the world. Their prophet-like work needs support and accommodation from the rest of us. Many individuals throughout history have been heralded as innovators; their missions lauded yet doomed to fail when public opinion has swung the other way. I don’t believe that any individual with a creative vision can succeed alone. I’ve been supported when I’ve had an idea. I suspect those who support great leaders feel their role is to enable the mission: They become Sanchos to their Don Quixottes.

A timeless film, The Mission, tells the story of several characters on personal, political, military, corporate and religious quests in eighteenth century South America. Their chosen missions come into serious conflict. They discover for themselves how missions are huge burdens that come at great cost. Life is a mission; for some just to survive it. A better quest may be to find ways to thrive while alive.