My first reaction on reading today’s prompt was, Oh wow! It’s been everything from God to my profession to my marriage over the years. How to narrow it down?
I began to think of specifics… psychology, sobriety, teaching, etc.
I once had a hot pink keyfob I bought on impulse: It said “Woman With a Mission.” Did I have an articulated mission? No. But a guy at my internship challenged me once, asking What mission? and I blurted out with zero actual consideration or forethought, and only half joking, that it was “Changing the world one woman at a time.”
But it’s always been bigger than that. Because I’ve had other missions. Some one thing must underly them all, right?
On which subject, I have taught a unit on emotion and motivation every semester for eleven years, and I most semesters I have asked students to do an exercise which involves listing their values. Your underlying values drive everything else–and there’s some evidence that doing this exercise, even without sharing it or discussing the rationale, helps 1st-gen and minority students do better in school. Without any other intervention. Measurably better. Which suggests, to my mind, that it’s working for everybody behind the scenes.
They get a “Values Picker” form, with two columns of checkboxes, one for important values you identify with (for example, “ethical behavior”) and one for marking the three most important. Then they are asked to write a letter explaining to another student in the class why those top three values are important and what difference they have made in your life, with some examples of things they’ve done or choices they have made in their lives based on those three. There’s blank spaces at the bottom for adding anything important to them that didn’t appear in the list.
Being the kind of professor who won’t ask students to do anything I haven’t done or wouldn’t do, I completed the list and wrote a letter, too.
I checked wisdom, of course, as a Buddhist, since that is the ultimate goal of the Practice. Service was another, along with truth, nature, love, kindness, integrity, generosity, ethical behavior, courage, and compassion. But I think you can see how love might be at the root of all of them. I mean, why be generous or honest or courageous except out of love? Etc.
So the writing prompt question becomes, What is my core value? What is my North Star?
Love.
Love is the foundation of it all. I think of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s book title, In Love With the World, which hit me like a ton of bricks when I first saw it, and I think Yeah, that’s me. I love this beautiful universe and every hecking thing in it. I have loved horses, nature, stars, moons, sunrises and sunsets, flowers, dogs, cats, birds, psychology, therapy, teaching, sobriety, students, my friends. I love truth. I love people. I love the planet. In Buddhist terms, that comes out as compassion, lovingkindness, and generosity.
As goals, mind: This is not to say I’m some paragon of virtue. So that at choice points, the question becomes What is the loving thing to do? the compassionate choice? the most generous act?
Anyway.
I can’t wait to read other people’s: Write on, y’all!
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