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Erika asked:

How do we discover our mission in the world?

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There are two assumptions that I can see underlying this question: that we do have a mission in the
world; and that it is the sort of thing that we can discover.

Firstly, it can be argued that we do not have a mission in the world. Some argue that the world is
ultimately meaningless, a chance occurrence, and that we are also creatures of chance, with no
mission. The idea of a mission seems to imply that somebody or something has set the mission. If
there is no such somebody (e.g. God) then there will be no mission.

This brings me to the second point. For a mission to be discovered, it would seem that it has to be
there already, waiting for us to find it. But there is an alternative. We can set our own mission for
ourselves. We invent it, not discover it. This makes more sense to me. I don't mean to say that we
just make it up out of nothing. It arises out of our desires and aims, all in the community(ies) in which
we live. Social institutions, our upbringing, our chosen circles of friends and so on all come into play.
Within this, however, we can make choices about what is most important to us and those we care
about, and this leads to us setting up our mission.

Tim Sprod