“Cheshire Puss, would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
–Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
“…if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which [one] has imagined [one] will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
–Walden, Henry David Thoreau
When began my work at University of Rochester Hillel in July of 2015, my only Rochester-based board member, Rick Goldstein (also known as the Mayor of Jewish Rochester), generously introduced me to members of the community that he thought might be able to help our struggling organization. One of the people he introduced me to that first month was an older gentleman who was a local businessman of not insignificant means. We’ll call him Harvey (not his real name). Harvey was as different from me as two people can be. He was old enough to be my father, a Republican, a Trump supporter, and much more socially conservative. Though Harvey had not supported our Hillel for many years, Rick thought there was a chance he might do so again in the future and thought my meeting him was worthwhile.
On that initial meeting, Harvey declined the opportunity to make a gift deciding (perhaps wisely) to see how long I lasted and what kind of leader I would turn out to be. But I continued to reach out to him from time to time and update him on our progress. After a year or so, Harvey became a donor again and in an odd turn of events, he and I became friends. Harvey’s wife was in the late stage of a terminal illness and he had been told that he needed to extend his social network so that he would have friends and support when she passed. I offered to be part of that circle and we agreed to have lunch every month at the only restaurant that Harvey liked, the Rochester landmark known as Char Broil (it’s a diner).
No matter how early I arrived for our appointments, Harvey was there already ensconced in a booth, Wall Street Journal open on the table. Sometimes he didn’t wait for me to order and was already enjoying his meal. Harvey always had buttermilk pancakes with blueberries unless it was Friday in which case he had the fried fish special. I always had a Greek salad regardless of the day of the week. That fried fish looked good though.
Our unspoken agreement was that on those occasions I could tell him what was going on with Hillel and with me, but no pitching, no solicitation of donations. These were purely social get togethers. We usually ended up arguing (good naturedly) about politics and social issues. It was an interesting experience for me. I haven’t had many Republican friends. He often said he respected me because I was a traditional liberal and not a progressive. I never really figured out what the distinction was but it was clear he meant it as a compliment.
One thing that Harvey and I did have in common was that we had both come to Jewish life later in adulthood: me in my 30s and he in his 50s. One day I asked him to share his journey with me. He told me that though a committed atheist and secularist, he had been persuaded to take a trip to Israel. There in his hotel he had a chance encounter with a rabbi and he ended up attending a Friday night Shabbat service and meal with him. The experience had such an effect on him that when he got home he decided to explore what this Judaism thing was all about. He began studying in a class with a local rabbi but spent much of the classes trying to lead the rabbi down a teleological rabbit hole. “How do we know there is a God? If God made the universe, who made God?” That sort of thing. Not invalid questions, but as we already know there are no answers to such questions. They are dead ends. Then the rabbi said something to Harvey that according to him, changed everything for him. The rabbi said, “Harv, you are asking the wrong question. You are asking “How am I here?” You should be asking “Why am I here?”
In other words, Harvey recalled, “What was my purpose?” The next 30 years of his life became an effort to answer that question, and the Jewish tradition provided a context to begin his search for meaning and purpose.
If you have ever worked for or been involved with the board of a nonprofit organization, chances are you have engaged in some kind of strategic planning process. I have been part of such an effort at least five times. The first step is usually to create a mission and/or a vision statement. A mission statement states the organization’s reason for being (Why are we here?) and a vision statement states how the world might look different as a result of its work. Hillel provides a good example of each.
Our Mission: Enriching the lives of Jewish students so that they may enrich the Jewish people and the world.
Our Vision: We envision a world where every student is inspired to make an enduring commitment to Jewish life, learning and Israel.
So many of us have engaged in this sort of deep existential questioning with regard to our work organizations but how many of us have asked the basic question of ourselves: Why am I here? How do I want the world to be different because I lived?
I have often written that identity is the story we tell ourselves about who we are. We rarely write this story down but it is an invisible script running in the background nonetheless. There is a second part of the identity question that is even harder to capture and that is: Who am I trying to become? How would I behave, what would I be if I were that person?
So here is my challenge to you: Take a few minutes this week and write your mission statement. It should capture the best parts of who you are today and the aspirational aspects of where you want to go in your journey, and maybe how the world will be different because you lived. If you want, you can write a mission and a vision statement for yourself or combine them into one. Like the best of these statements it should be easy to understand and short enough to read on an elevator ride. To be clear, I am not calling on you to commit to a Steve Jobsian “dent in the universe.” Even Steve probably didn’t make a dent, truth be told. Rather, consider what are the actions and values that you feel are an essential part of a meaningful life for you? If possible, it should encompass your work (assuming you enjoy and find your work meaningful), your relationships, and your interests and also be aspirational: whom do you still want to become? It is also worth pointing out that you are never too old to ask these questions. My friend is still pondering the questions and working on the answers at age 84.
I’d love to see what you come up with if you want to share and you can see mine here, but maybe wait to look at it until after you write your first draft so you are not influenced unduly.
Of course, it goes without saying that having a mission statement does not ensure that you will live your best life, achieve your potential, or fulfill your purpose. Still one of the pre-requisites of “advancing confidently in the direction of your dreams” is to actually have a dream.
What’s yours? Why are you here? What will be different because you were?