I was bending over one my rose bushes, spraying it with some spray that supposed to fight black spot, when I felt a stab of pain in my finger. Recoiling, I saw this little triangular lance sticking in my skin and tiny red globules forming along the small line it had scratched. As I pulled it out with my teeth and started sucking my finger, a car pulled over to the curb. The window rolled down and a woman leaned out.

“I just had to tell you how much I admire your garden,” she said.

Every gardener loves such compliments. I felt like my beloved UNC had just won the NCAA basketball championship. “Thank you. I really appreciate that. You should come by and see it in a week or two,” I answered as I walked over to the car with my finger in my mouth.

“I can’t wait. At this time of the year, I drive by almost every day just to see what is showing in your yard. Did you hurt yourself?”

“Roses. Now I know why they call those thorns ‘suckers,'” I joked as I put my finger to my mouth once again.

“Why do pretty things have to have such ugly thorns?” she asked.

“Maybe so you’ll appreciate them more. It’s no big deal. Goes with the territory.”

“They are a big deal for me. I don’t have roses because the thorns make them so troublesome. I just buy them at the florist.”

“Wait until you see that first bloom,” I assured her as I pointed to a bush as the back of the garden. “It and the others will make all the scratches worthwhile. Roses are the only flowers I voluntarily cut and take inside the house.”

We chatted for a few minutes more. As she drove off with a chuckle and I returned to leave the roses to feed the lawn with a homemade concoction of cheap beer, sugar, and vinegar, three words from our conversation stuck in my head: thorns, roses, troublesome. For this woman, those thorns were huge obstructions to fully appreciating what it takes to get roses. For me, those needle sharp suckers are just little things, tiny pinpricks, that I won’t let chaff, bother, annoy, stop, or wear me down.

This little exchange got me thinking. It’s not an original thought. I’m sure if you google the web you’ll find thousands of sites that discuss thorns and roses. Nevertheless, I’m going to put in my two cents. Too many students come to us seeing only their own thorns and have to be shown the rose within them. Yet, too many of us academics think the classroom is too thorny, almost like a briar patch. Far too many of us, not wanting to bother to take the trouble, tend not to tend to the student before he or she is ready to bloom. In fact, far too many don’t believe there are roses within a lot of the students and any efforts we may exert would be wasted and futile. And then, we wonder why this neglected person whom we didn’t water or feed or nurture, didn’t bloom to his or her potential, if at all.

I think the greatest gift a teacher can bestow on a student is to come to the classroom seeing the noble rose in each student’s soul, determined to show a student that beauty within him or her, and committed to helping a student see and reach past his or her thorns. Sure, students are not low maintenance any more than are roses. Sure, it all takes enthusiasm, tenderness, time, faith, effort, thoughtfulness, hope, passion, and love. Sure, you’ll get your fingers pricked. Sure, you’ll get your hands and legs scratched. But, as I told the woman, when you see that one bloom, two blooms, ten blooms, twenty blooms, you know it is all worthwhile.

So, when you look at a rose bush or a student, what should you see. What is it your duty to see? Thorns? Roses? I say, “Screw the thorns!”

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Spring has sprung. I’m in the garden feeding, weeding, spraying, mulching, planting, transplanting, designing, admiring. The gallaria, amaryllis, bearded iris, and roses are already beginning to bloom. The echinacea, coreposis, pineapple geranium, tiger lilies, daisies, and stokesia are getting themselves ready to burst open. The rudbekia, regal lilies, and rabbit ears are revitalizing themselves. And, I am biting at the bit to plant and tend my caladiums. So, my thoughts have a spring to them.

All this is a lead-in for a very “wintery” message I received a couple of days ago from a young teacher. He is a friend of mine and once was a student in some classes with me. He told me of three students in his class. They are, in his words, “a pain,” “troublesome,” and “disruptive.” He describes them as “total racists who I can’t anything with.” He described how he was “not very kind to them,” had “lost it,” and “angrily exploded” at them in class. He ended his message with a defeated, “I can’t wait for the term to be over.”

I replied that if he couldn’t wait for the term to be over, it already was. I have found, I told him, whenever I believed there was nothing I could do with a student, I was right. And, I wouldn’t attempt to do anything. If, however, I believed there was something I could do with a student, I was right. And, I would do whatever and for however long it took me to do it.

As I wandered through my garden yesterday, I was thinking of him. Among my reawakening, budding, and blooming plants I saw a lesson for both him and me. You know, I, my mind and heart, am like my garden: my feelings and outlooks and beliefs and thoughts are bulbs I’m planting and plants I’m tending. And, only whatever I plant and tend in my soul will have the opportunity to grow. I can choose which bulbs to plant in my attitude; I can choose the plants to tend in my outlook; I can choose what will bloom in my heart. Whatever I want to grow I plant and tend, and what I want and tend will grow. The garden of my soul is in my hands. I design its landscape. So, I can plant and nourish the bulbs of fear, doubt, anger, frustration, irreverence, thoughtlessness, pale heartlessness, impatience, hopelessness, confusion, and resignation; I can plant and nourish bulbs of inspiration, watchfulness, awareness, sensitivity, confidence, enthusiasm, admiration, glowing reverence, tenderness, kindness, joy, thoughtfulness, hope, patience, commitment, love, faith, and belief.

This is the power I have in my garden. This is the power I have in the classroom. And, I have to decide how I am going to use it every day. For if I have any chance of having beautiful flowers in my garden, I have to have beautiful flowers in my mind, heart, and soul. I always have to dare to dream. I always have to believe in miracles. I always have to work joyously for them to occur. I always have to open my eyes to their beauty, my heart to their magic, and my mind to their possibilities.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Spring has sprung. Can’t sleep. This Levaquin is keeping me off the streets and off-balance, and I’ve got a heavy tickle in the back of my throat from a touch of “yellow lung.” That’s what I get from breathing the ochre stained air all day as I played in my bursting flower garden. Spring has sprung, and so have my Susan’s allergies. Sneezing, swollen eyes, hacking coughs, stuffy noses, sore throats, headaches, grumpies, and the “miserables” in general are the heralds of winter’s end. Billows of golden clouds are sweeping across the land jaundicing everything and everyone in their path. The Saharan sandstorms don’t have anything on our South Georgia pine pollen storms. Two days ago, I proved that having a Ph.D. doesn’t mean you’re smart. I had my car detailed! Dumb! That spic and span look lasted about 30 minutes. Now the pines are giving it a heavy gold plating.

Spring has sprung. Actually, it began with me in December, when gardening was both a faint prospect and distant memory. I took impish delight in pouring through the caladium catalogue, imagining the dazzling color layout, making my selection, and placing my order for 400 of them. Spring has sprung, for, as is the case every year, my Susan feigned–I hope it was feigned–stern annoyance when she saw the four cases of caladiums that had arrived last week before I could hide them from her. Shhhh! She still doesn’t know about the six new roses.

You know, there’s mystery and magic in my garden. It’s really a spiritual experience of preparation, planting, tending, and then waiting for who knows what. I prune, plant seed and bulbs and new plants, divide and transplant old ones to give them new life. I don’t know which are going to germinate, take root, grow, or bloom–or when. All I can do is have faith. But, no matter how many years I’ve been gardening, I am always filled with awe and wonder and joy. Every time I see a seedling peek out through the earth, a dormant flower unfurl a leaf, a stem triumphantly emerge from a clump, or a bloom burst open, I get emotional. For the garden, is such a sacred life affirming place. When I see all this, I am calmed and soothed with a feeling that all is good and right. And, I am thankful for the restorative balm of the garden’s comfort.

Don’t tell me spirituality has no place in the garden. Or, in the classroom for that matter. The classroom is no less full of sacred life than is my garden, and I get no less emotional. Every aspect of the classroom has meaning and purpose. The classroom sparks a sense of spirituality and life. Taking delight in each of the spiritual processes of preparation, tending, nurturing, waiting, and then giving thanks as a teacher is no different from a gardener in the garden.

Now, I’m not going to define what I mean by spirituality. I did that a little over a year ago when I wrote that “spirituality” was a word in “My Dictionary of Good Teaching.” I don’t think, however, that spirituality automatically has an place in the classroom as some advocates might argue. At the same time, I don’t think spirituality has no place in the classroom as cynics and critics might argue. A fairer statement is that the right kind of spirituality can be a very powerful educational asset, and that better things tend to happen to individuals that consistently are embraced by spirituality and lesser things tend to happen to those who do not.

Now, what do I mean by the right kind of spirituality? It was Joseph Campbell who said that the greatest barrier to a religious experience is organized religion. It’s not particularly different in education. Spirituality shouldn’t be in the classroom if it’s a deadening, “ho hum,” put you to sleep, organized, structured, predictable, routinized, ritual “you gotta do this” spirituality that acts as a barrier to an educational experience. But, as I find more and more from the profound impact of a simple exercise we do at the beginning of the class called “The Chair,” if it’s a “wake up” spirituality, a “freeing up” spirituality, and a “let’s see what’s inside you” spirituality, you bet it has a place. A prime condition for a spirituality, be in the garden or classroom, that is an alarm clock for me and an awakening for so many others up is simple: not knowing what would happen next, learning to trust yourself and others enough that you let go, take a shot, relinquish control, and let it happen. You let your potential and that of others begin to emerge to take you and them wherever it goes. You let your and their “I can’t” and “It’s not me” and “I’m not comfortable with that” arduously be replaced by a “Let’s see.” When you do, a surprising and excited “Gee” so often makes its appearance. With this kind of spirituality, you don’t insist on a particular “right way,” on control, on order, on quiet, on comfort, on convenience, on guarantee. The spirit of the classroom should not be a place where the spirit is stifled, where it’s fenced in, where everything has become a yawning formality, where class attendance is doodling rote and where stale “this is the way to do it” certainties are numbing. Many times I think that the formal lecture format–and even the controlled discussion format–and the formal note-taking and test-taking and grade giving format far more often than not keeps both professor and student from experiencing the vexations of challenged thinking and feeling and doing, where they curl up and allow themselves a paralysis instead of a flexing of their muscles. Sometimes I think far too many academics’ attitude about what they do or are supposed to do are like ivy: they cling tenaciously to their point of view.

Yet, mystery is at the heart of education no less than it in the garden. It’s called “unique potential.” There are things in the classroom that are beyond imagining. It’s a place, like my garden, where almost nothing is impossible. There are long journeys being taken, some seen and others unseen, in that limited space. The classroom is fraught with those opportunities of proverbial “teachable moments” that often arise unannounced and unnoticed and all we can do, if we want to make a difference, is to have faith that sometimes, in some manner, at some place, what we say and do will really matter. It’s a “who knows what will happen” happening; it’s a “who knows” whether our high hopes and the best of intentions will really make a difference; it is based on a faith of ultimate impact that will occur beyond our desire, our knowledge and awareness, and our need for certainty. People who don’t understand this, who can’t deal with life’s essential “don’t know,” try to cover their anxiety with proofs that this or that happens with scientific studies, with testing, with assessing, with evaluating, with accounting for, with having fixed goals. Real education, however, is not really a testable here and now. At it’s core, it’s not about the transmitting and gathering of information. It’s essence is far more about transforming than informing. The heart of an education is about changing lives. It’s what I call a “down the road” and “who knows” and “let’s wait and see” process.

The classroom should be the place where a stirring and freeing, not a numbing and chaining, of spirit happens. The classroom should be a spirited place of freshness, of becoming less certain, of more unlearning, of being “forced” to wonder, of being encouraged to create, of searching for the richness of oneself, of exploring the vast abundance of the world, of individual thinking, of being surprised by one’s inner possibilities, of being awake, of excitedly being at the edge, of being open to each moment’s pearl. In a classroom, the person, the process, and the goal all should be shrouded in mystery and magic, in awe and wonder and joy, in taking delight no less than they are in my garden.

Remember the chinese proverb that says, “He who plants a garden, plants happiness.” Do that in the classroom and I guarantee that more than once in a while all your efforts will be affirmed when years later someone gives you the wonderful gift of telling you that you made a difference and changed his or her life. Then, take pause and give thanks.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

Having a Personal Mission Statement is not about being better than anyone else; it’s about being better, slowly, day by day, inch by inch, than I once was. It’s my power of intention. It’s my inspiration. That is, it’s my energy source that grabs me and carries me along wherever and whenever it wishes without consulting me. It’s my motivation. That is, it’s my driving force to go out there and do whatever it takes. It’s my connection with my unique potential–whatever that may be–to become significant rather than merely successful.

My life is, and always has been, the result of the choices I’ve made. What I feel, think, and do determines what happens to me. I become what I think about and what I feel about. Every feeling and thought and action makes me stronger or weaker, better or lesser, appreciate or depreciate, bountiful or short-changed, mobilized or immobilized. The way I choose to look at people and things determines the way people and things look. And, if I change that look, that look will change. Someone, I think it was William James, said that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you hold it there long enough, it will become a reality. That’s what a Personal Mission Statement is. It’s an agreement with reality: a perpetual, ever-present, mind and heart stretching picture of what I would like to be. I’ve found that it has worked for me.

You know however a personal mission statement, however it is framed, is a loud inner voice. It says that you want to do good and want to feel good. It’s the source of kindness, faith, hope, belief, love. I found that feeling good is a choice, and it is a choice thatcreates a higher consciousness and sharper awareness of my “oneness” that acts as an antidote to most anything poinsonous.

Someone asked me what does it takes to get a Personal Mission Statement. Honestly, my answer was: “Honestly and patiently repack your bags.” Like I said the other day, my personal mission statement didn’t emerge from an annual planning ritual or retreat or a consultant’s workshop. I got to mine by struggling with, reflecting on seven questions over the past decade: Who am I? What is my life about? What do I stand for? What am I capable of? How do I get where I want to go? How do I live the answer? The most critical and toughest question is: What’s holding me back and how do I get it off my back?

My sense of mission and my mission statement grew like a plant and slowly opened as a bloom. It was and still is an arduous, brutally honest, sweaty, uncomfortable, inconvenient, time-consuming task to see clearly what goes on around and in me. It has taken me painful and reflective years of attempts to find importance, meaning, purpose and direction. It was a long, messy, drawn out, agonizing, groping, soul-searching, incremental, “in-venture.” Don’t be cavalier about it and don’t expect it to appear in the flash of blinding light and emerge from the white cloud of a hollywood moment. It has taken reams of crumpled sheets, draft after draft, some frustrated snarling, a bit of cursing here and there, glass of wine after glass of wine, hour after hour after hour by the fish pond, mile after mile of walking before the sun rose in the sky. There wasn’t much glamor about it. I looked at my life. I had to admit it was largely unlived, that it was a cup filled with disappointment, dissatisfaction, fear, sorrow, sense of failure, weak self-confidence, low self-esteem, and spiritual pain from which I had been drinking for so many decades. I worked to discover what moved me, to identify my true passion, uncover and utilize my gifts, find my uniqueness, tap my potential, envision my life’s work, blaze the path to power and possibility. I started out looking for what I wanted to do, to really do, and ended up looking for who I wanted to be, to really be. It began as a quest for a job description and ended up being a quest for a purpose, that mighty task, that is greater than merely surviving and more than merely acquiring. I had to be patient with myself, for I had to learn that the journey is as important as the outcome. I’ll repeat that: the journey is as important as the outcome.

Slowly, oh so slowly, and painfully, oh so painfully, my life began to take a dramatic shift. Slowly, I could say, “This is who I am becoming and this is what I am about.” Slowly, I began to shed–or, at least, come to terms with– my fears, insecurities, self-doubts. Slowly, I began to find my place and being.

After talking with many people whom I know have a reflected upon and articulated Personal Mission Statement, I find they don’t have halos or wear white gowns. Yet, when you talk with them, there’s something about them. They have a distinctiveness, a uniqueness, about them. They are more than informed and filled with information. They are filled with what I’ll call an intense intention. They don’t just have good ideas or neat methods; they have a calling. They just have just a strong and almost invincible sense of purpose. And, yet they are “pit bullish” about it in the sense that you can’t tell them that what they intend won’t occur. They do not feel powerless. They do not feel unworthy. They do not feel inconsequential or insignificant. They feel less the victim. They have an openness about them. It doesn’t matter to them what’s happened before. They don’t relate to the concepts of failure or impossibility because they’ve made themselves available to success and possibility. They’re living on purpose and aren’t either distracted or deterred by the caution of yellow lights or halting red lights flashed by the negative and warning thoughts and actions of others. They have a fearless “let’s see what happens” attitude that defies frustration. They create their way their own way. They see the positive in everything. Their road is an endless line of green lights. They are extraordinarily imaginative and creative. They don’t have a need to fit in or to do things the way others expect them to. They’re awed by and inquisitive about and have an affinity for life. They’re always expanding their own horizons. They are a bundle of energy. And yet, they are assuring. They are more caring. They are more committed. They are more dedicated. They are more passionate. They are more generous. They smile more. They laugh more. Their eyes glisten. They have a deeper sense of responsibility. They have sharper perceptions. They have clearer understandings. They have a keener awareness. They better know what is important. They move and learn faster. They are initiators and creators rather than reactors. They feel connected to and a part of something larger than themselves. They have a wholeness about them, always combining their heads and their guts and their souls. They blame less and assume responsibility more. They are servers. They find fulfillment in their work which is not work to them. They’re avid learners. They are questers, journeyers, rather than arrivers. They never “get there,” never “get it,” and never “find it.” They are process people rather than goal getters. They are antsy, itchy, restless. They pursue wholeness. They work to be in emotional and spiritual shape as intensely as they do intellectual and physical shape. It’s they’re living in a different world indifferent to reality checks that list why what they do just won’t work out.

Having your sincere “why” at your fingertips is the best insurance you can have to keep alive. It works! I guarantee it! It helps me decide and sense how to act, what to say, what to do. It keeps me from living someone else’s mission and prods me to be a dynamic educator who wants to build a new future. !

Make it a good day.

–Louis–
——–

As I just told Jim Taylor in Portugal, I have come to the conclusion that institutional mission statements don’t turn people into missionaries; the visions of an institutional mission statement doesn’t transform people into visionaries; the purpose expressed in an institutional mission statement doesn’t make people purposeful; the spirit of an institutional mission statement doesn’t instil a spirit into people; and, the high sounding language of an institutional mission statement issued from on high doesn’t send people on a high. To the extent the institution needs more programatic and operational clarity, I suppose we need the framework of an institutional mission statement. To the extent we want to alter the culture of the people in the institution, we need to do a whole lot more in a whole lot of different ways a whole lot longer.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I’ve been sitting in the dark by the fish pond this morning, aching and thinking a tad more than usual. Aching because it was a very, very rough and tough walk. I barely made it. This powerful antibiotic the urologist has put me for the next couple of week is subtley killing me. Better an antibiotic should be “killing me” figuratively than to have a cancer do it literally. But, even if that Levaquin does drain some of my physical energy, having the biopsy come back clear as a bell, to use a mixed metaphor, is more than enough to give me an emotional and spiritual compensating kick. Thinking because I reflectively think and mediate each morning to prepare myself for the day, my sense of life is a bit more sharpened because of my near-death car accident in December and the deadly prospect of being afflicted with cancer, and because of the overwhelming number of responses to my first sharing on my personal mission statement.

You know, to acquire a personal mission statement does take a lot of long and hard personal reflection. That’s not easy. Personal reflection stuff can be a tough swallow for those whom reflection is not their cup of tea. It is uncomfortable and difficult and humble question marking. It is not comfortable and easy exclamation pointing. Trust me. I know. I avoided it for decades and blamed the world for my pain. My unexpected and volcanic epiphany broke the pattern. Imprisoning blame has since metamorposed into a releasing responsibility. “Me” has since transformed from a comfortable, weakening, paralyzing, unnatural stasis-like “is” to a challenging, strengthening, dynamic, naturally ever-changing “becoming.” Now, after over a decade has passed since that crucial moment at Hyde School, reflective time is built into every fiber and every moment of my life. I struggle to live a conscious, reflective life in order to know myself, who I want to be, what I want to do, to whom and what I want to give my life, the values I value, and the legacy I want to leave. It’s akin to asking myself the tough question, “Will you follow me wherever I take you?” and coming up with the even tougher answer, “Yes.”

“Know thyself.” That’s what the ancient, wise, old Greeks said to do. That sums up the purpose of a Personal Mission Statement. If you know who you are, you know what you must think, feel, and do. Institutions don’t not have mission statements; people do! I think I’ve said that a few times lately. It’s worth saying a thousand times to drive home the point. Institutions aren’t sentient; people are. Anyway, if people want institutions to have mission statements, they each have to start with their own. Then, they can work long and hard to build from a “my” to a shared “our.” It’s no different from saying that if someone wants to change the world, he or she first has to start with himself. We each create and are contained in our perceptions, thoughts, personal relationships, and social associations. We create our own personal “systems.” We choose to be who we are. To understand that simple fact, and accept the consequent responsibility, we have to acknowledge it. A personal mission statement is simply the publically articulated emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and social “system” of our own creation in which we choose to operate.

A personal mission statement, then, is, as Emerson might have said, the blossom from which comes the seed that develops into the fruit. It is the inseparable cause of the effect. It is a suggestion for the future of ourselves, a template for meaning, a reason for being, a living “on purpose.” It gives someone the chance to establish what is important, to chart a course, to go on an adventurous journey into the unknown, to draw energy, to weather the storms, to slog through the swamps, and to make decisions to stay the course. It’s a way to connect with your sense of purpose, your vision, your mission, your doings, and get profound satisfaction from doing it. It is, as Maslow might have said, so compelling, so strong, it is inseparable from a person’s self. For me, as my e-colleague, Stu Harvey, succinctly put it, you have to struggle to become your personal mission statement. A personal mission statement is for your own life; it is your life. If you live by a personal mission statement, you make the heady decisions and don’t waste your time on the “small stuff.” For me, as these past couple of weeks have shown me, acquiring a deeply reflected and articulated personal mission statement, and struggling each day to fulfill it, is probably the most vital thing I could have done.

My Personal Mission Statement talks about my own life rather than about my institution, although they can be a shared vision. It is a vision for the future of my life, not the operation of my institution, although they can be compatible. It is what Plato might have said is the “good academic life,” maybe even just the plain ole “good life.” By the “good life,” I mean being in the place where I belong, being with the people I love, doing the right “on-purpose” work, using my talents on something I believe in and is greater than me, retaining my intellectual independence, holding on to my moral convictions, having an unshakable ethical anchor, being personally responsible, and being spiritually whole.

My personal mission statement, for me, meets my four criteria for a personal mission statement or maybe for any institutional mission statement for that matter:

1. It had to obey, as Newton phrased it, Nature’s Law of Parsimony. It had to be short and simple, short and simple enough to leave no room for the meaningless and nice sounding embellishments and ramblings of those undefinable “oh, you know what I mean” shopworn buzzwords, tired cliches, and catchy phrases.

2. In its simplicity it had to have clarity, that is, it had to be clear enough to be understood by a teenager.

3. I had to be able to recite it instantly on Jeopardy.

4. It had to be at my moral, ethical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual core. Or, in the words of Steve Sample, it had to be the “hill you’re willing to die on.”

Oh, want to know what my Person Mission Statement is? I’ve said many times in the course of my sharing. But, I never tire of saying it: Just remember, it’s mine; it’s me. So far, it reads like this:

“I am that person who is there to help another person help him/herself become the person he or she is capable of becoming.”

I still have to learn to better live it and better live up to it. More later. Until then….

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I’d like to share a few reflections about personal missions statements over the next couple of day. Let’s start with this one.

Let’s be honest. Most institutional mission statements are annouced from “on high” or emerge from the efforts of an institution’s planning process.

Institutions, however, don’t have mission statements; people do.

Let’s be even more honest, and my Dean, VPAA, and President may not like this if they read it. Both my institution’s current mission statement and proposed new mission statement aren’t all that important to me. Sure, I understand all the time and energy that has gone into formulating a new one. And, deeply being involved in the strategic planning initiative, I am certainly empathetic to why they must exist and how the tight, demanding time frame in which they must be formulated constricts the process. There are practical demands and requirements of the Chancellor’s office, Board of Regents, legislators, Governor, faculty and staff, donors, parents, students, and the general public. But, a mission statement is not the solution to a problem or the meeting of a requirement or a “one shot” fulfillment of a duty, or the result of a planning process.

It’s not what mission statements say that are important; it is what they do. I’ll repeat that. It’s not what mission statements say that are important; it is what they do.

And, my institution’s mission statements, old and proposed new, don’t do a thing for me. Neither is important to me. Neither turns me on. There’s a disconnect between either one of them and me. Neither is rooted in my adamantine core. They’re ideas, even important ideas. They offer direction, even important direction. But, they don’t create a shared commonality with me. They’re not that powerful, inspiring, moving, impressive force in my heart. Why? They’re so institutional. They’re a search for a “strategic vision;” they’re not personal visions. They say, “This is why VSU has or will have these organizations, programs, and policies.” Mine is so personal and says, “This is why I exist, why I am alive. Bring it on!”

My institution’s mission statements belong to someone else and being asked to fine-tune the language isn’t a committed buy-in. My institution’s mission statements aren’t personal. They’re not mine! They’re not visceral. They’re not inside me. They’re not me. They’re not interlocked, interconnected, integrated, interacted with my avowed purpose, vision, value system, and mission. No, I am moved and directed by my articulated personal mission statement that for years, literally years, I have struggled, agonized over, lost sleep about, cause me many a tossing and turning, pondered, walked on, searched for, written, rewritten, trashed, written, rewritten, and am still honing. It is my discovered, formulated, and articulated “why” that is important to me. That is because my personal mission statement is me; it is mine. It is my “true north.” It is my purpose, my vision, my values, my concerns, my hopes, my beliefs, my faiths, my aspirations. It’s my inside coming out. It is something very meaningful; it’s in my heart and soul. In the spirit of Deuteronomy 6:6-9, it’s in my heart and soul. I wake up with it, talk about it, share it, teach it. It shines through my eyes; I wear it on my face; it’s in my voice; it’s in my step. It’s my aura. I spend my days and deal with every day, day-to-day relationships with it consciously in the forefront of my mind, heart, and soul. It is my mantra.

Institutions don’t have mission statements; people do.

I fondest hope is that my institution’s new mission statement is only the first step in long, arduous, and time-consuming building of a “will you follow me” shared vision that will connect with the disconnected. For a genuine caring about a mission or vision statement that seeks commitment rather than merely compliance, must have a commonality. It must be rooted in collected personal senses of missions and personal visions. The members of my institutional community must buy into it. Each must have a sense of ownership. That is the way to make an institutional mission statement so compelling that it stops being a concept, people begin to see it as if it exists and is alive, and no one is willing to give it up. Otherwise, it ultimately will be meaningless and powerless, little more than the unread first page in the institutional bulletin or various handbooks, and will be banished to the mission statement’s graveyard where it will merely gather dust on a lost shelf unread and forgotten.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

The computer says it’s 5:11 a.m. I had been on the internet answering messages since 3:30. I was too wired to sleep. No walking today. Still feeling some effects of a medical procedure I had yesterday that was looking for the “Big ‘C.'” My cell phone rang about a half hour ago and I just hung up. Thankfully, the student called on my cell phone and didn’t wake up my angelic Susan. Had Susan been aroused from her slumber at what she calls this ungodly hour, her halo would have fast disappeared and I would have had the devil to pay. Anyway, if getting a clean bill of health wasn’t uplifting enough, after fighting for a week to keep my spirits up and not get into a funk, silently listening to this student for about a half hour sent me higher. The first news about cancer was relief; this second regarding this student was satisfying and fulfilling.

Anyway, if I had been struggling to imagine an ideal day on campus, it would have been last Friday. It was one of those peak experiences; one of those memorable moments. It was a moment of living fully alive, an instant of being the person I want to be. It was an exhilaration, like feeling the wind in my face. It was a reminder of what is really important. I wish I could describe what it was that caused my palms to break out in a cold sweat, brought tears to my eyes, got my heart throbing and blood rushing, made my lungs gasp for breath, penetrated deep into my bones and deeper into my soul. It was like having the wind knocked out of me. But, I can’t talk about it. It’s too confidential. Only four people know what happened. Three are me, my Susan, and the student. But, trust me, it did happen and boy the warm after glow has yet to fade. It got me through the sub-zero chilling prospect of cancer.

This happening and telephone call got me to thinking.

Here I am in my thirty-sixth year at VSU. At my retirement–an unlikely prospect–what would students say about me, what would colleagues say about me, what differences have I made in people’s lives, how would I want to be remembered, what legacy would I leave behind, what dents have I really put in the universe?

A long time ago, a high school teacher came up to me at graduation and told me that the teachers, knowing I had been voted “Clown of the Class of 1958” by my “friends,” felt I would probably be the least likely to succeed of the college-bound graduates. Nice people! Until 1991, my degrees and titles, a prominent research and publication resume, as well as national scholarly renown, not withstanding, I would have agreed with them. Then, I had an epiphany and started to wrestle with a bunch inside stuff and started both my life and career anew. I discovered the real, painful, hard truth that if I want to change the world, I have to start with myself. All change is internal change. Every decision comes from within me. I can’t separate myself into a work “me” and an other life “me.” Every decision touches all of me. And, I embarked on a near decade-long search for a sense of mission and the formulation of a personal mission statement.

Friday, I felt success and accomplishment. It had an overwhelming and caressing warmth to it. No, you won’t find this “happening” on my resume or annual evaluation or any assessment document. It had nothing to do with getting a grant or a contract for a workshop or having a manuscript accepted or having a conference proposal accepted. But, it had everything to do with a person. The accomplishment I felt was much more important and lasting. It was and still is internal. Let’s call it a deep, very deep, sense of fulfillment. You know, fulfillment comes from realizing and living by your values. Fulfillment comes from integrity, from being who you are and expressing who you are as fully as possible. It has to do with how I bring my self to campus, into class. I saw my personal mission statement live. I exercised and witnessed the the power of purpose, vision, and mission. The happening fell into my lap only because my personal mission statement, my purpose, my reason for being, had moved my lap to where it was falling. I did something that contributed to a life, that added value to a life beyond myself, that was outside myself, beyond my ego, beyond my professional self-interest. Living my personal mission statement said I could do no other. And, I feel as if it brought out the music that is both inside me and someone else.

And, it just hit home again: Institutions don’t have mission statements. People do.

In spirit of Forest Gump, “That’s all I’m going to say.” I’m going out to sit by the fish pond and enjoy the dawn.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–