Mission Statement

I think personal mission statements are corny. Is anyone with me here?

It's astonishing the extent to which our very vocabularies change because of the internet. People talk about things that “resonate.” We are more “mindful” and more “present.” We refer to something as having a “space,” such as a “safe space.” Everyone has a “coach” or a “coaching business.” And what about “curate?” All right, I blame the internet, but that's because I see the internet as being the superhighway of ideas. Why not the superhighway of vocabulary, or of the English language?

So, the personal mission statement. Mission statements are not new, and I suppose “personal” mission statements are not new, either. But I do believe that any “coach” worth his or her salt is going to ask you to work on some variant of a personal mission statement.

Corny or not, awkward and cringe-worthy or not, a personal mission statement helps us to clarify what we are trying to do with ourselves every day that we are lucky enough to take up space on the planet.

Here is mine. Please don't laugh and say it's corny, because I've already done that for us both!

Maya Rushing Walker writes novels from the vantage point of a mixed-race voice, representing both sides of herself as well as a third side that is usually silenced because it doesn't have a tribe. Never mind tribe–that third side usually doesn't have an interlocutor of any sort. That third perspective gets to have a voice in her fiction, and she hopes that it will find and connect to others who may have heard that voice, seen that unseen person, or those who may recognize that voice as the one that doesn't have a place to be heard. She writes about the experience of feeling awkward no matter where you are and who you are with. That cognitive dissonance has created the greatest country on earth, and some of the most painful human experiences on earth. Maya believes that people only grow through tension, but that non-stop tension is bad for the soul. We all need tension, but we also need release from tension. She hopes that her fiction is the release.

I'll keep refining it as I go along.