Analogies (or metaphors or allegories) seem to pop up at every turn in my days, although I don’t always notice or appreciate them at the time. Sometimes it’s weeks later as I sit down to write that an experience bubbles up and ends up in a post. One of those experiences occurred recently.
Long Lists of Words Can Feel Meaningless
I’ve been helping to launch a network of food producers in my area of the world. Anyone who has ever started something from a large bunch of ideas that came from an even larger bunch of passionate individuals knows that it can be very rewarding work … but work nonetheless. At one point, I felt like the My Fair Lady character Eliza Doolittle when we were trying to write the network’s mission, vision, and values statements. For months, our assembled group spouted words about who we wanted to be. Words representing aspirations and direction. Words about place, goals, and history. Scores of words on virtual whiteboards (we often met on video chat because of the pandemic) became hundreds of words via email and text. “Words, words, words. I’m so sick of words!” I understand you, Eliza. As it came time to compile and compress this continually growing list of words into concepts, sentences, and a document of mission, vision, and values, I came to realize that that list is backward — in reverse order of how I have come to first define and then live my life with multiple sclerosis (MS).
Values Come First, Then Vision, Then Mission
It’s impossible to set out on a mission (to live my best life in the constant companionship of an incurable, degenerative disease) without a vision of where I want that life to lead me. Equally, it’s a fool’s errand to try to lay out that vision without first understanding and acknowledging where my values in living that life lie. We were doing it all backward. Once we flipped our first priority to establishing our values as an organization, it was like the fog lifted and our path forward cleared.
Understand the ‘Why’ Before the ‘What’ and ‘How’
I don’t know if they’re still a “thing,” as I’ve tried to avoid much of the online world since it’s become a series of echo chambers and bot-shared memes, but formulating a personal mission statement used to be a common suggestion for people making or going through major changes in their lives. Changes like being diagnosed with an incurable disease. I may (or may not) have given a go at one of these in my days of rehabilitation psychotherapy, when it all seemed too much near the beginning. I don’t write that “may or may not” part flippantly. Much of those early days is “what’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget” stuff. If, however, I were to endeavor to write such a mission statement today, I would start by assessing the values part first. Understanding the “why” before we try and figure out the “what” and “how” seems clear in hindsight. In the throes of the battle, however, we might focus too intensely on the other two — particularly the what — without first doing the soul-searching work of determining the underlying principles upon which we’ll build that new life we’re trying to define and devise for ourselves and our families.
The Right Words Can Have a Lot of Power
Living with MS and trying to make it down this new path can be difficult. It’s nice to have a few lines jotted down on the fridge or the bathroom mirror to keep us from wandering too far off our intended path. Rather than a mission or vision statement, however, I feel like a few words to fall back on about who I am (or at least aspire to be) might be more helpful as I hitch up my trousers, lace up my boots, and head down this new path. Mission (and vision, but most importantly, values) accomplished. Wishing you and your family the best of health. Cheers, Trevis
