Why We Need: Mission
“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment.” Viktor Frankl
Recently, I had the opportunity to fly on a restored World War II aircraft with my daughter. It was special for several reasons, not least because the flight was on the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the opportunity itself was a prize she had won for her poem honoring first responders.
As we prepared for the adventure and arrived at the airstrip, we knew we’d be flying on a C-47 Skytrain, which was used extensively during the war; we learned, though, that it wasn’t just any C-47. It was a plane bearing the name “That’s All, Brother”—the aircraft that led the Normandy invasion. It was the “spearhead of the spearhead”, first among 432 others that dropped over 13,000 paratroopers into France ahead of the amphibious assault hours later.
As we took off, it was impossible not to think about the young men sitting in that same seat over seventy-five years earlier. As a civilian with no combat experience, I could only fall back on historical photos, film re-enactments, and my imagination as I looked at the cargo door and imagined preparing to jump out of it and straight into anti-aircraft fire, showers of shrapnel, and, if I survived long enough, vastly superior enemy ground forces.
Band of Brothers (2001)
How do you mentally prepare for that? How do you function? How do you lift your body and over 100 pounds of gear, hook up to the static line, shuffle to the door, and jump into the face of very probable death?
As I glanced out the window, flying at roughly the same altitude as the plane did on that night in 1944, one word seemed to answer my inquiries: mission.
Mission was an interesting word, and I was surprised by it, for two reasons: the strength of the impression I had of its importance in that moment, and because a friend and I had recently discussed the core needs of a man’s heart—mission was not one of those we mentioned.
But I now believe it is a need, and one that is sorely lacking in many lives.
The word mission is derived from a Latin term meaning “to send”, and was originally used of Jesuit priests who were “sent abroad” throughout the world as “missionaries”. By the 17th century, it had come to mean “that for which one is sent or commissioned”.
To not have a mission, then, is to be in a state of not being sent to where one finds oneself at the moment; to not be commissioned for, well, anything. It is to exist in a vacuum, devoid of meaning, and like a marooned astronaut floating in the ultimate vacuum of space, it is to experience utter helplessness.
This, by the way, is different from not having purpose. The English term purpose comes from, again, a Latin word meaning “a thing proposed or intended”. To have a purpose, to have a thing one aspires to or aims toward is certainly important; it is the overarching “why” of our lives. But mission is the “what” and “how” of that purpose, right now, today.
Indeed, this relationship is borne out in military principles. The Army Ranger Handbook addresses the importance of mission extensively and defines it as a “clear, concise statement of the tasks to be accomplished by the unit and the purpose for doing them”. Note the relationship: a purpose, but also the specific tasks for accomplishing it.
This began to answer my question about how a young paratrooper rallies himself to leap into hellfire. It was mission; it was a series of tasks that had been trained for, experienced already, and done in the company of a unit of men similarly situated. Purpose would not be enough; the purpose for the corporate invasion (defeating the Nazis, liberating Europe, ending the war) or for the individual enlistment as a paratrooper (a sense of duty, a desire for adventure, a thirst for revenge, a way to escape your small town…extra pay) could not alone send someone out of those planes with focus, clarity, and effectiveness.
It was a mission well trained for that propelled them in the face of fear. As one veteran said in an interview fifty years later: “In the back of your mind you wonder what’s going to happen, but you know you’ve been trained and trained in what your job is going to be, what you’re supposed to do, and that’s what you’ve got to think about.” As a Marine Corps training manual puts it: “When a Marine faces a situation in combat that is similar to a situation he has faced in training, his fear will be less and his confidence will be heightened.”
We need this sense of mission in our daily lives.
Too many of us lack both purpose and tasks…leaving us in a state of “mission-lessness”, a sense of being stuck and “un-sent”. In each season of life, this takes on a different form. It can be a confusion about what to major in, what entry-level job to take. Later it might be whether to marry, or what to do now that a sports career, an academic journey, a military commitment has ended. Later still, it might be a stagnant feeling in an established professional path, a multi-decade marriage, or the monotonous time-suck of ferrying children from one not-so-cheap activity to another.
The first step, according to the Ranger Handbook, seems almost too simple: “receive the mission”. But missions are easily rejected. Due to apathy or arrogance, insecurity or inattentiveness, we can miss the message, not receiving the “purpose and tasks”—and hence not feeling “sent”—in that job, that marriage, that life stage…that car ride with one’s sons and daughters.
Receiving the mission in that moment requires vision, initiative, and imagination (the Army’s words, not mine!). More than anything, it means being in the presence of the Commander, and being ready and willing to be sent—whether the mission requires rigor, or rest; speaking, or listening; stage-presence or foot-washing; confronting injustice or breaking the power of secrets.
And if we are ready, and willing, to receive the mission, we will be adequately trained, prepared, and provided for by a good Father, who is near to his sons.
No matter what lies on the other side of that door.
"I have spoken; yes, I have called him; I have brought him, and he will succeed in his mission." Isaiah 48:15