M is for Mission
Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t. -Richard Bach
It might be creating a children’s book, or writing a novel, or penning a symphony with Philip Glass, or creating a small brightly painted portable booth to wheel around Asheville to gather the stories of people who live here, or creating small baby kimonos to sell on etsy. Or it might be all those things. Whatever it is, there is art and artfulness involved. That much I now know, for sure.
Three years ago, I taught a week-long class on imaginative facilitation with Kichom Hayashi, a brilliant man from Japan
My task was to create a collage in two pieces from a library of images. The first piece was to be constructed of images I associated with business; the second piece was to be created by using images I associated with artistic expression. And there was a third piece: the bridge between the two.
Much of the process was unconscious, fast, gathering images that—for some reason—appealed to me as I pondered each of those pieces. It was done in a way that didn’t allow for too much deflection through intellectualizing or hypothesizing or philosophizing. No, I was just to quickly create them.
I finished and stood back to see my creation.
I was shocked by the clarity of what I saw, the articulation of something I had never voiced.
One side of the collage was filled with cold, silver, metallic, sharp edged, mechanized, clocks, dead images–it was dense and suffocating. The other side was bright, colorful, alive, moving, joyful, hot–it was open and freeing, with space to move and think and create.
There was a deep chasm between them; none of the images from the two sides touched until I tried to build a bridge between them. It was clear I had effectively, over these years of working, divided my life into what was essentially a demonized version of business (cold, sharp edges, mechanistic) and art (joyful, full of heat), and I was doing my best to keep the two separate without realizing it.
[An aside, in the manner of those wacky Greek choruses: Speaking of missions, I’m tired of mission statements and weary of values statements. Almost all companies have them; few live by them; fewer still are the employees inside those companies who could tell you what they are. In many cases, the mission statement is a fake one, not the real one: beat the competition, deliver high stakeholder returns. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but why not just say it? And what’s the use of having a diversity value statement if no one in the organization can tell you what diversity means? End of soapbox]
Why have we compartmentalized our lives and circumvented what is hot for us? Why don’t we create opportunities for the heat that drives us to actually drive us? “Why,” my business partner David often asks me, “why do you so divide what we do with The Circle Project and what you’re doing on 37days? Aren’t they the same thing?”
Yes, well, yes they are.
Perhaps it comes with redefinition. I asked David a question once when we were on a business trip that, it turns out, was as much a question for myself (funny how that happens): “What if your art could provide everything you ever wanted or needed. How would that change how you approach your art?”
Blink.
Blink.
Now is a good time to run to that hot place that makes you feel alive, the one where you know you are doing what you burn to do in this world. Keep in mind, as D.W. Ewing said, “A zealous sense of mission is only possible where there is opposition to it.” Put another way by David: “You know you are doing good work in the world by the wave of resistance that rises to meet you.” When we are the happiest, we often are met with resistance from those not quite as happy as we. It’s okay. That’s their story, not ours. Mine is not to own the unhappiness of people who are not fully alive or to play small to make them feel bigger.
Intentions: In 2008, I will stride confidently toward my mission—that thing that fills me with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it. This may or may not be the thing that I’ve always done. It may not even be the thing that I’ve always gotten paid for. Perhaps it’s not within the realm of the known. But it will be the thing that I have a burning desire to do. It will be art.
From the last alphabet challenge: M is for mother
