Michael's Corner

Daily writing prompt

What is your mission?

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My mission? It depends on which stage of life one is in when asked the question. In a spiritual sense and in a practical one, my twenty-four-year-old self had a much different mission than the man writing these words. Then my mission was to build a career that would help me rise to what I had come to recognize as an acceptable standard of living. Twenty years later, the name of the game was balancing a career, a family, and a home, and making sure none of the pieces that contributed to our collective happiness suffered. Tack on another twenty years, and I find myself looking across the dinner table, in a home in which now only two reside, realizing I’m more in love than ever. Mission completed? Not a chance! Time for a new paradigm.

I recently went on record saying: If all I had in life were intimacy with Kathy (my wife), a good cup of coffee, and a baseball game, I’m way ahead of the game. Ahead or not, I’m still mortal. One day, Kathy and I will say goodbye to one another, and thus I intend to fully exhaust these simple pleasures that bring me joy. But doing so will require me to maintain, with due diligence, this biological mechanism that houses my spirit and intellect. So that is my humble mission: Kathy and I co-piloting an old but well-preserved ship called “Our Life Together” for as long as we both shall live.