Everyday, I focus on doing one thing that enhances my mission. Everyday, I accomplish something that pushes it forward.
Years ago, I was sleeping in a parking lot in my truck on a military base after a complete life transition/implosion (read all about the saga here). I was cleaned out and accumulated $125k worth of debt with few assets beyond my old Chevy truck. This transition is what prompted an awakening to what matters most in life after years spent irrationally dedicated to military service (protecting the tax base). One of my greatest friends dropped a bomb of information on me (Aaron Russo’s, Freedom to Fascism) that fucked me up completely, and sent me spiraling down the rabbit hole that I have yet to escape.
I understand connections, and see a grid of connected dots. I can’t stop seeing it, in fact. There are pieces of truth that unfold everyday but my mission still remains clear to me. I remember laying in the back of the truck, my life in ruins and declaring a solemn oath to help free as many of the debt slaves and economic indentured servants as possible in my lifetime. I see the connection between the way people express with money and every looming global crisis evolving. The idea of infinite mathematical growth applied to finite resources yields disaster in the hands of a species built to consume.
That transition was in many ways voluntary. I made all of those decisions that left me in a wreck — nobody forced me to do anything; I took all the bait myself in a prolonged kool-aid gulping session.
The next transition is not so voluntary and many of us will find ourselves involved in crises that feel like our own doing, but will collectively signal systemic unraveling. I want you to know I’m here to help, and that I won’t abandon you. There’s a real person at the other side of this, and although the virtual environment makes tribal communities tough, it’s still a link.
I want to know — what is your mission?
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To be happy most of the time instead of just a fraction of the time. I have ideas as to what will probably get me there, but the goal is still the same. This basically comes down to not wasting so much of my time doing things that are not important to me just so I can exist in this flawed society. I’m talented in many areas of life, but the way society is structured, those talents are not often recognized because I don’t play by the rules. Playing by the rules is a form of following, and I was not born a follower. I know who I am and what I have to offer this world, and can prove it. These are my terms.
“To provide more usefulness for the future than I consume in resources.”
The first step is simplification, because the less one consumes and owns, the less you have to do to make up for it (I have a long way to go in this first step.)
Brain glitch:
I had an epiphany yesterday. It started with the concept of today’s insurance companies and then I realized that it applies to all of our System of systems, including a lot of peoplecorps. Think about why and how distributed risk ideas start out: to provide benefits to those in need during unintended catastrophes.
An insurance company used to be a conduit for money to flow in from premiums and out to claimants, while skimming a little off the top. Now, they just burn the money and the executives get the energy from the burning money (landscaping, elaborate buildings, lobbyists, computers, advertising), while some soot might fall on the dying beneficiaries and be called “benefits”.
Government has followed the same model. So have many rich people and it seems, all of the merged corporations (much of this I think is due to the income tax code).
Where is the clean, simple usefulness of the original labors of people’s hands and minds? Buried in the ashes.
“Unintentional catastophes” is a key term here, because I would say that our poor health, climate instabilities, and political indulgences in uselessness are actually semi-intentional catastrophic results that increase the flow of money to the fires of ‘economics’. Whether you burn the money or not, it adds to the GDP.
My mission is to go out and meet the destiny I know I was born to live. To walk my talk and live from a place of fearlessness. To prove to myself what my spirit knows to be true, and when this life is over, to die a proud soul.
Guiding mission principle: “To thine own self be true.”
My mission: protect the babies… starting with my own.
My greatest misery now is that I live two thousand miles away from those babies. I volunteered to care for babies at women’s shelter for a few hours a week, that’s how desperately I needed to be around them. I had to let that go, though, because I need to find work in order to get the money to go back to Chicago, to fulfill my mission.
I read a lot about the collapse. I’m not going to survive it, not with this strength-sucking chronic illness, but I’m strong enough now to teach my grandchildren how to survive it and I am determined to do that. I’m learning everything I can, so I can teach it to them. I mean for *them* to survive and they will. It’s in their genes.
Our ancestors didn’t survive the Middle Passage just so we could wimp out when the going got tough.
Kimberly, I’m with you. I’m starting to believe that may be the only real thing to focus on — protecting kids because they can’t protect themselves. I wish you the best of fortune.
Incidentally, I did some reading on the Middle Passage after your comment, and couldn’t believe how much I didn’t know. 200 years of ungodly misery that killed and displaced some 100 million Africans. I think my immaturity or lack of empathy when I first learned about the slave trade in grammar school (plus getting the G-rated version) sort of negates the impression.
It is truly difficult to imagine such a thing occurring on this Earth.
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