So I hope that by now, I have piqued your interest and you’re asking, “Okay already, what is the mission?”  If this occurs to you, take a second to notice whether or not you even know what it is.  No blame.  Neither do most of the rest of the many people I’ve asked.  It’s a question of positioning.  When you see what our mission is, when you hear it spoken, when you feel the energy of the mission as our shared purpose as Americans, you will appreciate that it is the great dark horse of our collective American Soul.

            “So what is it already?”

“We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do”…

The Mission:

·        to form a more perfect union

·        establish justice

·        insure domestic tranquility

·        provide for the common defense

·        promote the general welfare

·        secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity

            So what would it take to awaken and harness that Will.  Well, let’s start with the will to what.  And that “what” is a mission.  Seems like the obvious place to begin to me.

But what can we as a citizenry do about it? That is the central point of this essay.

We must realize that while the constitution provides the skeleton and structure of our government, the responsibility for the mission goes far beyond what can be achieved through legal and political manipulations. The responsibility, and just as importantly, the opportunity to fulfill that mission still rest in the hands and hearts of every American citizen.

THESIS: This extraordinary mission deserves to be resurrected from cliché, extracted from the cobwebs of neglect, retrieved from the attic of indifference, wrestled from the clutches of power brokers, brought to our attention, and actively embraced as our collective purpose.

 Then we must consider what it would take to for each of us to actively commit to that vision and do whatever we can to understand it, flesh it out, and ultimately take all necessary steps to fulfill that mission.  We must learn to see how our self-interest and the achievement of our mission are inextricably bound—as one goes, so goes the other.  There is no separation.  And we must learn how to do this together.

Our mission identifies six very explicit goals that our founding Parents set out to achieve through the establishment of our country and its government through the constitution. These goals need to be re-framed in order to activate and empower us. Given a chance, they have the power to call forth our best nature and to provide a unifying direction so that we can progress and heal the many divisions in our American Community and more effectively deal with the variety of problems that plague us.

I believe that once we recognize we have a mission, and clearly demonstrate what each of us can actually do about it, we will be able to enlist Americans of all walks of life and all ages in this noble undertaking. And as we do, we make it possible for ourselves and our posterity to reap the harvest …to unearth the bounty of blessing that waits within the treasure chest that is the heart of the United States, the American Spirit.

When people see that regardless of the circumstances of their lives, they can actually make a contribution, they will be charged with inspiration and passion.

Our mission provides a springboard for all those disillusioned, latent idealists among us to dive in and take responsibility for our collective welfare. It can counteract the feelings of impotence that undergird our cynicism, undermine our optimism, delimit our motivation and that enslaves our will. The commitment to our mission can fuel the determination it takes to make our American society work. And it inspires the creativity that is required to make an America that exists for the good of all, in short, to promote the general welfare with a passionate resolve.

WHAT’S IN THE WAY?

Along with unbridled self-interest, I believe the feelings of individual impotence combined with cynicism and an extreme degree of disconnection (from ourselves, each other, our own bodies and environment and the essential nature and dynamics of life) are the greatest obstacles to progress and progress is, as I am suggesting for America is the realization of our shared mission—a more perfect union….

Many people do care about where we are headed and about the serious problems that plague and frustrate us, but feel impotent to do anything about it.  I believe that they certainly would care about our mission… if they recognized it as such. Many people feel impotent in the face of the overwhelming forces that seem to control our lives and as a result, close off into their own private universe of family, job, friends, self-preservation and self-gratification… largely missing the opportunity to make a real difference to our community and to realize the personal sense of empowerment and pride that comes about when one realizes that he or she has something important to contribute, and just as importantly, that it will actually make a positive and palpable difference.

I think this perspective is especially relevant to young adults, who, hopefully, haven’t been completely overcome by cynicism and who still, if only vaguely, harbor some desire to make a difference with their lives and their talents.

Fortunately, our mission isn’t limited to young or old or to either conservatives or liberals or even politicians and their supporters …or any other way you can cut up the demographics of Americana. No, all you have to is be an American and recognize the value of achieving that mission for it to be relevant to you and to empower your life as a citizen. And when we can see the connection between achieving these ideals and the many challenges we face, that can empower us.

(Just look at what we were able to accomplish in World War II when our resources were galvanized around the mission of defeating the Axis Powers, the sacrifices people made and the incredible amount of resolve that determined our capacity to emerge victorious.  But so far, it seems that that level of commitment only shows up when we are faced with “an enemy” something that needs to be stopped or overcome? Is that what it takes to motivate us?  Do we have to be so confronted by threat that we can only rise up when we are in resistance or can we ignite our will to bring something positive about with determination, foresight and strategic design?

Now mind you, there will be all sorts of interpretations of that mission and ways of understanding it and other numerous ideas of how we might fulfill it, but that’s good, that’s what makes American great—the rich mix of our diversity…that we can debate over how to fulfill our mission and take advantage of a myriad of perspectives that can only enrich the debate and the resultant creative process that we must be engaged in to bring our mission to fruition.

But if there is no overriding direction that we can all agree to, then our differences serve only to separate us which causes endless rancor, disrespect and lack of cooperation, and oh, yes, endless yelling matches, name calling and the putting down of our opponents on TV talk shows and call-in radio and through the media, which further exacerbates our divisiveness and does little to empower our unity.  After all, the word, “United” sits firmly as the very first world in the very name of our republic.  How many other countries are named after a process, a way of going about being together as a nation?

What I am suggesting here is that we simply recognize that we have this mission and then, for each of us look into our own hearts, find out how much we care and commit some portion of our energy to fulfilling that mission—that we take some responsibility for our collective purpose. By doing this, we will begin to see how, by our working to fulfill our shared mission, we end up inevitably fulfilling ourselves and our individual life purpose, and especially to see how we can make it possible for our children, our grand children and their children to live in a better America and as a result, a better world.

            By informing Americans that we have a mission, we can begin to, at least, have a conversation and as a consequence of that, hopefully, to start mobilizing our talents, energy and resources to take more conscious steps to bring that mission closer to actualization.

            In this essay, I will present some strategies to achieve our vision, some ways to get started and even how we might more passionately and effectively enhance whatever we are already doing to fulfill that mission, but I believe that if the 280 million of us knew that we have a mission and put our collective imaginations together, we could make an extraordinary difference in achieving that mission. 

Or, to be more realistic, if 10% of us recognized the potential of our mission and chose to actively participate and committed the next 50 years to it…you wouldn’t recognize our country by 2055. A, it will still exist and with greater power and vision because it will be built on the power of cooperation and B, it will be a far grander and healthy society (see book, “No Contest.”)

Or to be more practical…if…say 5% of us commit 5% of our time to this mission in concrete ways, then we can take major strides toward our goals and see significant accomplishments in a relatively short period of time…in just a few generations. (yes, we have to think in terms of generations to come—just as our founding Parents did—they didn’t conceive of and design the Constitution to meet quarterly profits.) 

            Now, as I said before, it’s not that people aren’t working on this mission.  Many  people are, in their own way, with passion and intelligence, but the problem is that few people recognize it as our mission. And all too often they limit their efforts to that part of our mission that most relates to their own issues.

Or people do not participate and leave it to the government, the political process, which they only marginally participate in, and inevitably leave it up to well financed special interests to influence our direction and to decide our fate. 

To fuel our passion for the mission and to see it more quickly expedited, we cannot limit our efforts to the political process. First, it must become intensely personal.  We must as individuals find a way to relate to it and see its relevance to our lives, to what we want and need, to what bothers and frustrates us and at least as important, as a way of satisfying an even deeper need to find meaning for our lives.

Essentially fulfilling our purpose is not limited to politics or economics though those realms seem to be primary arenas in which we engage whatever is relevant to our mission.  Fundamentally, it is about life. (Remember, the Declaration of Independence starts with “the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”) In order to take on the kind of ardor required to actualize that mission, we must see how our own best interests are served by a commitment to our mission, that the achievement of our heartfelt desires are dramatically realized in proportion to the collective achievement of our shared purpose.  We must realize that fundamentally there is no real separation between the part and the whole. As one goes, so goes the other and that any effort on behalf of the whole will affect the part.

            I want to challenge people, including myself, to embrace the mission, to enter into discussion and debate about it, and to see how creative we can be in implementing the strategies that it will take to fulfill the mission. To quit bickering (no matter how well conflict sells) and start using our creative imagination to heal our lives. My goal with this essay is to move our American mission way up on the priority list of what engages our interest and passion, even to the point that we will not only get involved, but are willing to sacrifice some of our personal agendas for the sake of this all important mission—the Mission of the United States of America.

Errol Strider can be contacted at estrider@juno.com