on discovering my personal mission, question 15

Life on Purpose: 15 Questions to Discover Your Personal Mission

Question 15: Given your talents, passions and values, how could you use these resources to serve, to help, to contribute? ( to people, beings, causes, organization, environment, planet, etc.)

Another difficult question. Truth is I panic, often, that I don’t have a marketable skill (I’m not a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, etc.) that will guarantee employment. I have academic credentials (an MDiv, an MBA), but degrees don’t count for much on the job market, not compared to experience. I have experience as an academic administrator, and while there are administrative jobs a plenty, they don’t really pay the rent and god knows they don’t allow me to put anything aside.

That said, I’d like to serve, contribute, so to speak. Service not my career anchor (my desire to serve is not as strong as my desire for freedom, autonomy, or my desire for work-life balance) but the desire to change the world (or to see the world changed) is there. Inequality (the pervasive sort we’re starting to see) angers me. But I have an understanding of its structural causes and really there’s nothing I can do about them apart from getting angry. When I find myself completely powerless, I get depressed. So I’m just not motivated by a my desire to change the world so much as by a will to survive, thrive even, under social political conditions about which I can’t do anything.

I’m playing now with the idea of helping others, on an individual basis, to negotiate the system we have, to find ways to flourish, in conditions not always conducive to human flourishing. Lives of beauty, meaning, can be had, on low budgets, in less than ideal conditions, but carving them, creating them, is a not easy task. It’s one I’ve managed, however, and I think it’s something I can help others to do.