I discovered the mission of this life of mine about six years ago through Jewish life coaching I received in Jerusalem, when I felt totally lost in life. Two years later, I learned that the day on which we discover our mission, or why we were born, is the second most important day in life.
One way to measure the importance of any life event is by how it affects our subsequent life. This discovery has indeed affected my life so deeply that I can even call the part before it "prehistory".
In retrospect, I was asleep until this life-changing experience. Although I did think quite seriously from time to time about how to live my life, I still followed, rather unconsciously, what I had been conditioned to believe.
One such belief in my professional life was the so-called "success" in life. After discovering the mission of this life of mine, I immediately realized that my academic job, even with tenure, was not even a means to an end. Worse still, it distracted me from my mission.
It didn't take me long after this discovery and the resulting realization to decide to quit my academic job. Naturally, I was afraid for my financial future. But I was even more afraid of wasting my precious time doing something that didn't feel aligned with my mission.
In a deeper sense, however, I did not waste my time there, as I learned a number of important lessons. The most important one is probably that academia is not for me, which I could not have learned without spending enough time there. ;-) I was also able to develop my patience. ;-)
Not only have I been able to survive financially since I made this decision through a series of unexpected events, but I also finally found a solution for my financial stability in a most unexpected way a few months ago.
Now I seem to be able to focus fully on my mission without worrying about my financial survival. In the meantime, I have also found a new way of fulfilling my mission in an even more meaningful way, one that can affect more people - not only in the present, but also in the future.
I would like to close this blog entry by sharing what I learned from one Jewish sage about life mission: "Discovering our life mission is part of our life mission." One of the ways I fulfill my mission is by helping others help themselves discover theirs. And perhaps the most important thing I can do in this role is to help them realize that each one of us has a unique mission.