Walk 3: Your Mission

Last week, I was speaking to a friend about missions as we were developing a program. We kept discussing back and forth: "What is the mission of our program?"

It made me think: if I had to write in a sentence how I'd like to be of service to the world, what would I write?

The word service is crucial.

How would I like to be of service to the world? One sentence answer.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to eat ice cream every day.

Do you know how you'd answer this? Maybe for you it's easy. For me, it was difficult.

I landed on this, for the moment: "I'm trying to build a more peaceful world."

Then, I thought of a couple things. First, what's getting in the way of a more peaceful world today? And second, what can I do about that?

My brain started taking this backwards, step by step. I just took the first thing I thought of in each case.

(1) Our world is not peaceful when people fight. Why do they fight?

(2) We fight when we believe something very strongly, to the point where we don't consider another point of view. Why don't we consider another point of view?

(3) We don't consider another point of view when we don't feel connected to another human. When do we not feel connected to another human?

(4) We don't feel connected to another human when we haven't taken the time to really get to know them. How do we get to know another human?

(5) We get to know another human when we spend time with them, and ask them questions. What gets in the way of us asking each other questions?

Etc etc.

I landed on this idea that to try to build a more peaceful world, we need to practice asking each other questions from a place of curiosity.

Some components I thought of:

(a) Be Present. If we're present, we can notice if we're asking questions.

(b) Listen. If we listen to the answers to our questions, we can hopefully relate to another person.

(c) Focus on Commonalities. Write out what you and another person have in common, especially when it comes to beliefs and values.

My gut says that at the most basic level, if we focus on building our capacity to be present, then it gives us a better chance to connect with other humans.

If we can better connect with other humans, we'll create more tolerance across cultures.

If we create more tolerance across cultures, we can build a more peaceful world.

So how can I start?

For the moment, I'm going to continue writing and having presence-filled conversations.

What's your mission and how can you go about it?