Last March, I posted an entry entitled “Really: Who Are You?” – an essay where I attempted to outline, as clearly as I could, some views on the meaning of my existence. Since that time, it’s been a summer of continuing reflection as I significantly changed most of my vacation plans in order to address health issues and to confront, once again, the matter of my mortality.

As I was browsing some of my older computer files yesterday, I came across a document composed sometime in 2004. [That was the year I found myself struggling to redefine my identity after being involuntarily displaced from long-term employment (with the Oregon University System) and commenced a process of job-search (and high stress) that ultimately lasted three and a half years.] I entitled that 2004 file “Personal Mission Statement” – which I restate here:

The multiple purposes of my lifetime on this planet are to:

• Nurture my intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual selves
• Have deep and meaningful relationships
• Experience life to the fullest and live until I die
• Show up, be present, and tell the truth
• Be involved, yet free of attachment, and, above all things
• Be true to myself.

Amazingly, I still stand by these statements of purpose.

This is my life.