Creating a Life Mission Statement – English Essay
I have composed a mission statement — a constitution for my life, if you will. I feel that more than anything else, this statement declares who I am more than any other document I could write. I have included a part of it here: The supreme mission of my existence is continual happiness and eternal perfection. I found my existence on the principles of integrity and excellence.
To accomplish my mission: I am a student. I continually thirst for all knowledge. I desire to know the meaning and mechanics behind all things in the universe. I never tire of learning. I know that every single one of God’s children each has something to teach me. I do not keep to myself the knowledge I have obtained; I impart it to those who wish to learn in a respectful manner. I strive to teach both by words and by my good example.
I suppose it took me until my early teens to really discover the answer to the adults’ favorite question, “So, what do you want to be when you grow up?” And, that’s probably not all bad — I know some that can’t even really answer that question now. I most likely would not be far off if I were to say that my earliest strivings to find what kind of life I wanted to create for myself were based on my intense, almost shameless admiration for heroes. I find that most people have a hero or two; I have countless. I have had these heroes since my early childhood, and I always found them easily — firemen, policemen, airplane pilots, and of course my father, who managed a warehouse. My heroes propelled and inspired me, and there were even several times when I can remember I wished to juggle ten such careers at once.
Obviously, some time passed before I was focused enough to understand that any sort of adeptness in a career requires strict fidelity in and concentration on a single vocation. So, there it was. A doctor. My mother’s side is quite medically oriented; her father and brother are both physicians and her mother was a nurse in World War II. From an external perspective, it could easily be inducted that because these heroes in my life were in the medical profession, I desired to emulate that. I don’t doubt that this is somewhat true, but I suspect there is much more. I do not question the validity of the fact that my introduction to the medical field was through my mother and her influence. However, my desire to pursue that introduction was something different — it was a discovery made independently and a quest of the most passionately personal kind.
It was a pleasant coincidence; at the time I discovered the local hospital and the Medical Explorers Post, a group that met to orient young teens like myself to the medical profession, I had just begun to ascertain the complexity of the universe and become amazed at its beautiful intricacy. Despite all my analytic tendencies, I find that my mind often becomes exceptionally synthetic; among all the talk of the stars and the planets and the billions of light-years and the fiery supernovas and all, I listened to the dialogues about cells and neurons and COX inhibitors and found the same universe inside my own body. At the hospital, I saw people who were struggling with this universe — those who had fractured their bones, those who needed a toxic part of their body destroyed, and even those whose own hearts were on the brink of experiencing their own supernova. It was at once disheartening and incredibly motivational — one day I would see them again in their suffering state, but on that day I would be able to aid them.
I love to do this; I love to help people. I love to heal and to remove suffering. However, I want to become a doctor because medicine is my passion. If all I wanted to do was to help people, I suppose I could become a social worker or join the Peace Corps. I am, of course, delighted with the idea that my passion will be able also to help others. But there is even more. I mentioned that since my early teens I have been infatuated by the beauty of the world and fixated on understanding its complexity. My aspiration to practice medicine then is based on this more fundamental desire to learn about the universe. To me, the human body is the most intricately complicated and beautiful system that I can see in the cosmos, housing not only our minds but directly affecting how we see the world and how we progress. Thus, practicing medicine and gaining knowledge of this miniature universe is the most fitting way that I can both specialize in a vocation and further my progression in universal knowledge, especially as it applies to us as a human race.
It is most likely the desire to ease pain and suffering that I desire to enter the specialty of anesthesiology. Obviously, as a biochemistry major, I love the mechanisms of the human body. It is wonderful that technology has taken the medical profession so far that we can actually open someone up, severing critical arteries and dislocating the entire heart while removing a congestive abscess and all the while the person does not feel, remember, or move a thing. It is often heard that patients “love their anesthesiologist,” and for obvious reasons—of course, I feel that this is a benefit. As an organic and biochemist, generally I understand why the patients do not feel pain. I understand how the drug interacts with the body and inhibits the suffering. I love the science of the body, but even more I love to see science at work accompanied by my hurting patient return a smile of relief.
I see science not as a small group of specialized branches of study, but as the comprehensive study of everything in the cosmos; my focus on biochemistry and other sciences at the university level is simply a reflection of this belief. My concentration on entry into the medical field is a natural consequence of my love for science and my passion to study and come just a little closer to mastery of this beautiful and complex world.