My Mission

When I was 13 or 14, my parents gave me “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” by Sean Covey for Christmas. I devoured the book, re-reading it for the next several years. It was the first book in which I highlighted, dog-eared, and wrote notes directly on the pages.

Habit 2 encouraged readers to write a personal mission statement. I loved the idea but never wrote anything of consequence. Now, having accumulated several more years of life experience, I feel more equipped to write that statement.

The sentiment of my mission coalesced largely over the past six years. The transition from college to work to graduate school to now was difficult and enlightening. I finally have a sense of what I want to accomplish, yet I feel secure enough with myself to accept that may evolve.

So, what’s my mission?

I examine the forces that shape our lives and share that knowledge with the public.

This mission highlights what fascinates me and what I want to do with that knowledge. I am a writer, researcher, and storyteller at heart, and I aspire to write a book one day. In the interest of focusing on systems rather than goals, I aim to write pieces that people can point to and say, “I learned something from that.”

My professional and amateur interests span astronomy, psychology, Internet studies, and history — disparate disciplines bound by a common thread of humanity.

Like many people, I’m struck with awe every time I look up at the night sky. So much exists out there, and while science has enabled us to learn a tremendous amount about what’s up there, it’s impossible (for now) to travel across light years or stand on the event horizon of a black hole. So, why does astronomy matter?

Because every particle that makes up every human being on the planet comes from the stars in that sky. The universe began with hydrogen, a smattering of helium and a smidgen of lithium. All other elements in the periodic table, including the carbon that forms the basis of life as we know it, emerged from nuclear fusion occurring in the cores of stars and in the aftermath of star explosions. Everything that’s inside you comes from up there.

What goes on inside us, particularly our brains, also captivates me. While we don’t have to think about telling our body to breathe air, pump blood, or digest food, our thoughts drive so much of our behavior. And while thought processes may feel automatic, they’re malleable and well within our control. Figuring out how to change the way we think and implementing those changes isn’t easy. But I take comfort in the paradoxical notion that while I can’t control anything outside my own mind, taking control of my own mind grants me boundless potential to construct a fulfilling life.

Nowadays, that life is not just experienced; it is increasingly documented by digital technology that creeps deeper into our daily lives. Personal and sensitive communications, ranging from text messages to financial transactions to data points about our physical activities flow through privately owned networks and sit on servers operated by companies that have wide latitude to use that data as they see fit. We as individuals must ensure that this emerging ecosystem of networked digital technology benefits, rather than restricts, us.

To do so, I think it’s important to put this moment in historical context. The human race has advanced tremendously over its existence on this planet. Look around you. So much of what you see and feel was designed or affected by humans. Buildings, roads, cars, books, families, music, math, elections, and the disease-resistant tomatoes in your fridge are the result of human activity.

Even if you’re sitting in middle of an ocean, forest, desert, or glacier, the device (or perhaps piece of paper) on which you’re reading these words was invented by humans. The language you’re reading right now, the shapes of the letters and the grammatical rules that render these words meaningful were developed by humans.

This point reverberated while I recently read Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City. As author Russell Shorto described how the philosopher Baruch Spinoza first posited that church and state could exist as separate entities, it hit me in my gut that values, principles, and norms change. That there was a time when people truly believed that dark-skinned humans were inferior. That 100 years ago, women in the United States had no right to vote. That the notion of “this is just how things are” is simply not true. History is not facts and timelines; history is about moments and people who seize those moments and make them matter. History is learning how people have harnessed their potential and applying those lessons to the present day.

As I move through life, I want to understand more about these forces, the physical, internal, societal, and historical forces that have brought me, you, and those around us to this particular moment in time. And if in that process, I say something that makes you go, “Hmm, I never thought of that,” well then, mission accomplished.

This post also appears on Medium.