Articles & Essays

Recently, my husband and I sat down to eat a quick dinner at Bill Johnson’s Big Apple Steakhouse in Mesa, Arizona, before flying home to Denver. The steakhouse created a Wild West ambiance with antiques of all kinds including old tin lanterns, fontier firearms and ammunitions displays, and antique barber’s chair with cracked red leather upholstery, and sawdust strewn across the linoleum floor. I wondered if our waitress’ replica peacemaker was for dealing with polecats that didn’t leave a decent tip!

Above our booth, a rustic sconce cast a nostalgic amber glow over the tongue and groove paneling and a large portrait of a mother and child in an oval frame of dark polished wood. The young woman in her blue satin Victorian gown gazed adoringly into her child’s cherubic face as they sat serenely on a bench beneath a flowering bough. Across the bottom of this tranquil scene blazed the bold statement: “A Woman’s Place is in the Home.”

In our politically-correct society, “them’s fightin’ words!” Therefore, one could almost dismiss them as sentimental; an out-dated, irrelevant Victorian platitude. But I couldn’t; not since learning about the importance of statesmanship and leadership education in the home at the “Face-to-Face with Greatness” seminars.

One presenter, Laura Bledsoe, quoted Samuel Smiles, who said, “The nation comes from the nursery.”

These words resounded in me.

The one TJEd concept that has most intrigued me is that of mission. I have a unique mission that I am on earth to fulfill, and that is the purpose of my life. Everything else I’ve studied falls into place under that single overarching idea. My life has meaning, and I have a work to perform. That’s both truly comforting and terribly disturbing, carrying a message of inspiration and huge responsibility. I have a work to do that is mine alone, and if it dies with me, it goes undone. Of course, the same is true of you. Have you personally begun to uncover the meaning of your life? But more important, are you taking the steps necessary to accomplish that mission? I tend to think that most of us have a long way to go on this path called mission. I certainly do! But just knowing that I have a mission and that it’s my job to discover it and accomplish it gives a great deal of focus and power to the things I choose to do.

I recently attended a talk given by Dr. Shannon Brooks to our group here in Arizona, where he spent some time discussing the nature of mission. In it he paraphrased Aristotle’s definition of virtue: something is virtuous when it does the thing for which it was created (e.g. a pair of scissors is virtuous when they cut a clean straight line). If we apply that definition to ourselves, we are presented with the question, “Am I accomplishing the purpose for which I was created?” And that question leads straight to another question. “What was I created to do?” That is the quest, to find the answer to what is both the most personal and yet most universal of questions. Answer that question and you find your mission. Find your mission, and everything else falls into place.

So how do you find your mission? I’m not sure I can really answer that question, at least not for anyone other than myself. For me, the answer came through writing. When I first climbed out of the box (you know, the one everyone always tells you to think outside of), I discovered so many possible courses of action that I was completely overwhelmed. Where before I saw only a few options, now there were too many to choose from. It’s like coming to the world’s biggest buffet, but you only get one plate. There are so many incredible-looking options, but you can only try so much. I was stuck, not wanting to continue the way I had been going, but afraid to pick the wrong thing. (That conveyor belt training sure does a good job of instilling a fear of failure, doesn’t it?) Over the course of four or five years, I probably came up with fifteen or twenty different ideas of what I should be doing with my life. However, I only acted on about two of them, and even then I quit pretty quickly.

I finally got some advice from my mentor. She suggested that I go someplace where I could be alone for a few days, just to mull things over. She also gave me a technique I have used a number of times since then: write at least three pages, and by the end you’ll have your answer. Even if you have to start by writing something like “I’m sitting here on this uncomfortable camp chair writing about nothing, and I don’t even know why,” by the time you get to the end of the third page, you’ll have your answer. Oddly, it’s worked for me every time.

Recently I was meeting with my children and outlining the structure of our summer schedule. My 12 year old daughter, our second child, was visibly disgruntled about something during our meeting. I met with her afterwards and we had an enlightening, heart-to-heart talk. She expressed a lot of disjointed frustrations until we hit on the real issue. She wanted very much to have the same privilege to study as her older, 15 year old brother. I was surprised by this because she already spends so many hours of her day reading, writing, painting, gardening, cooking etc. and I try very hard not to interrupt her activities. What she wanted was to be recognized as a scholar and given the privileges and responsibilities that go with it. When I asked her what phase she sees herself in, she determinedly, and with a hint of an excited smile, told me she is a scholar. She asked if she could go to her room and write out her summer study plan and then show it to me. I, of course, encouraged her to do so.

This lecture was originally given at the 1^st Annual Alumni and Friends Gala in conjunction with the GWCAn abbreviation of George Wythe University (formerly George Wythe College), a private liberal arts college headquartered in Cedar City, Utah, which Dr. Oliver DeMille helped found, and where he formerly served as president. There are also plans underway for building a much larger campus in Monticello, Utah, and plans have also been announced for a remote campus in Alberta, Canada. 2004 Commencement Ceremonies.

There is a widespread myth that feminism came about in the 20^th Century, that—along with Civil Rights and Environmentalism—feminism is one of our great modern advances. The truth is that feminism has a much earlier origin.