Meaningful

December 28, 2017 

One of my roommates has an extensive self-evaluation process around the New Year. This year, she mentioned a personal "mission statement." I work at a nonprofit, we have a mission statement that I can recite backward and forwards and that I fully stand behind. Every day, I'm reminded of the mission statement and continue to work toward its advancement. When I leave the job I have, projects will be left undone, opportunities will have been left unrealized, and there will be something I didn't or couldn't do because I left too soon. It's inevitable. The same is true of all of us. I’ve come to realize the same is true with my life. I've theorized on what my personal mission statement would be. And if I died tomorrow, I would have lived every day of my life until that moment believing in it and advancing it. Sure, if I died tomorrow, I'd never have had a boyfriend or gotten married or had kids or rented a car or seen the Grand Canyon and it would all be because I left too soon. But regardless of when I die, that will always be the case. I can be proud of the life I've lived so far because I've decided what makes a successful life and I've lived up to that until now. That's what's got me thinking. I've been thinking that if I die at such a young age or at the age before I expect to die, I'll have been cheated. I won't have had a full life. But that's discrediting the life I have lived. I'm angry at the thought that I'm shortchanging the wonderful and robust life I have lived in my twenty-three years for the perception of illness having stolen another fifty-four years from me. So I got to thinking, why do I feel like I'm cheated? Because I'm living on someone else's definition of a successful life. And mine doesn't measure up. Because illness makes me feel inadequate.

So I’m taking on a life of meaning. I’m accepting the responsibility that what I do, who I care about, how I live matters. It’s not an oppressive responsibility, but a liberating one. It's not based on what I achieve or what mile markers I reach or anything I can attain. For me, I'll have lived a successful life of meaning if I do only two things, one of which, is to leave the world a better place than I found it. If I do the two things I value most in life, I'll have lived a very meaningful life, regardless of when along the journey death finally catches me.

Wait, scratch that, I have already lived a life of meaning. 

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