My Mission in Writing and How You Can Find Yours

Do you know what your mission is?

Do you know what it is you want to do or why you want to do it? I’ve been thinking about mission a great deal lately, so I’m taking this time to share what I know about mine. And I’m hoping it helps you think about yours.

Right now I am sitting in a chair trying to get used to an old tool I never made very good use of. It’s an Alpha Smart, a portable no-frills word processor that leaves you with no real option other than to write. No cool games to play, no efficiency directed software that somehow manages to eat up hours of your time. No video. No audio. No tweets, no diggs, nothing too delicio.us.

It’s just me and my thoughts and an endless stream of characters forming words. So here I am conducting a little experiment to see what I can drum up when there’s nothing to click that will whisk me away into another window with a dozen other portals to explore. Don’t get me wrong. I love to explore, but for now I’d like to explore the contents of my heart and mind.

You see, sometimes when I’m in the midst of connecting with dozens of people every five minutes I forget who it was I was trying to connect with in the first place.

But now it’s all coming back to me. I seem to recall this fellow sitting on a couch and feeling pretty glum. And if I remember right, he was wrapped up in a blanket of regret, snacking on some pity party mix, and staring at a screen while watching his life drift slowly by.

That’s the guy I’m trying to connect with, and that guy, in some small way, exists in almost everyone.

Of course you know that guy was me, and every now and then he’s still me, but he seems to be me less often than ever before, which is why I keep writing to him and the parts of him that may exist in you.

I’m writing to tell him to get up off that couch, throw off that blanket, dump that pity party mix in the garbage can, and to stop watching his life go by.

I’m writing to him to tell him to venture out and go for a walk and to walk slowly in order to take notice of the smallest of things.

I’m asking him to notice the water bugs skimming the surface of a puddle of rain. I’m asking him to let himself hear the way the grocery cashier giggles as she talks to the bag boy. And I’m asking him to watch the way the light and shadows play along the edges of the face of someone he loves.

I’m writing to him to tell him to let it all sink in and help him find a way to express what it means to him. I’m asking him to light a small fire of gratitude and nudging him to feed that fire until the flames ignite something within him, something that glows and expands and nourishes his soul until it all becomes so big he just has to do something with it.

And I’m encouraging him to let that something be something that piques his curiosity and stirs his imagination and brings out the very best he has to give so he can share it with others.

So that’s who I’m writing for and that’s what I’m trying to tell him. That’s all. That’s my little mission.

Who are you trying to reach and what do you want to tell them or do for them once you reach them? If you haven’t already, take the time to answer that question and you’ve just found your mission. Once you’ve found it, why not head out on it? Maybe we’ll bump into each other as we’re out on one of our walks and we can watch the water bugs together.

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