WOTD LXVII - Mission
It's been a long time, and it's good to be home.
A few years ago, a coworker (and friend) called my extension, asking me to come to her office. I obliged, only to discover that another of my coworkers (also a friend) was there as well. They closed the door, laughed a bit (at themselves, perhaps), and asked if I could compose ”word of the day” (WOTD) emails for them so as to enlarge their vocabularies. They were very serious, and yet they had these glowing smiles on their faces, too. Their reasoning was that by integrating more sophisticated vocabulary into their lexicons, they would appear more intelligent to prospects and clients. I remember there being something about, “You sound so smart all the time, Paul. We want to sound more like you.” They were delighted by their idea.
What followed was about five to seven months of sporadic WOTD emails. They began with something of a comedic bent, with my writing goofy example sentences, making fun of etymological idiosyncrasies, and constructing silly jokes (WOTD XXX, for instance, was “lascivious” and three other similar words). They were usually short, although there were notable exceptions which were substantial in length (and substance, I hope). They were in part an experiment: could I write discrete, fully realized pieces solely in the margins of a high-intensity middle-management job? Could I write, one or two sentences at a time, something cogent over the course of a dozen or so two-minute breaks amidst meetings, phone calls, emails, emails, emails, and database administration?
The answer: with variable success, sometimes. But it was the most fun I ever had writing; and I was able to teach through it, as well. It all felt—like a sort of home.
However, over time, the comedy lessened. I began to write more and more about Truths, not just amusing polysyllabic words. And the margins of my days grew slenderer and slenderer. Eventually, one day—my birthday—I stood alone (rather, sat) in a department meeting, the sole opposing force against a novel marketing strategy with which I disagreed for manifold reasons. Of course, there were others who agreed with me, but they worried for their jobs. They remained silent. They needed the health insurance benefits. They needed their jobs. So did I. But I considered that there were worse things to lose than one’s job. Thus the end began.
With my departure from that place, the WOTDs fell away. I attempted to revive them in 2020, but my spirits were too low to precipitate the revival.
Ordinarily, WOTDs do not have music, but this is no ordinary WOTD:
[Unfortunately, the YouTube video with the best recording of this music cannot be embedded; for those reading on the web, you can follow the link in the above panel to open it in another tab/window.]
Today’s word is mission [n.] - … and let us stop there. This WOTD has nothing to do with whatever definition a dictionary, or thesaurus, might render. No. No, let us plunge into the Latin. mitto, mittere, misi, missus: “to send.” The root of “transmit” and “emit,” to name a couple. But also: “mission.”
What does that last word in the Latin verb mean—what does missus mean? It is the perfect passive participle. Where mitto means “I send,” mittere, “to send,” misi, “I sent”; missus? It is an adjective, and it means: “having been sent.” In the masculine plural, it is: missi.
A grand, animating heart of WOTDs is that, in the end, I do not care about some words’ official definitions. Not when they are baldly of other languages: not when their meaning glows brightest in those other languages. “A mission is something soldiers go on. It’s, you know, like, it’s, a task? It’s, um, a project? Like an assignment? It’s—”; no. This is silliness.
To go on a mission is to have been sent. To be the object of a sender. A mission brackets one’s life in the passive voice. You are not the prime agent, but rather, an agent of the prime agent. To be on a mission is to presuppose that there is That Which Is Higher, and that that Higher elected you as an agent of Itself in order to realize Its Will in the world.
This is why my words in that department meeting spelled the end for me: because therein, I expressed that I was not aligned any longer with the mission of that organization. Now, in my defense, the mission had changed—but I am not seeking to justify myself. Rather, I am seeking to justify the actions of my superiors. In speaking against them, I had rejected their mission. I was deviant, I was derelict. I had, by virtue of employment, committed to being a subordinate agent of their prime agency, and yet in that moment, I seized after a higher agency (in light of That Which Is Higher, as it were). Of course my superiors had to get rid of me: the only alternative would be to admit that I was right, which would be to cast the entire [new] mission into uncertainty.
Everything in life, you see, is missional. The mother who rebukes her reprobate child: missional. The trained dog which comes when called: missional. The soldier who sprints towards his death in defense of brothers-in-arms whose names he know not: missional. The idle office worker setting a new high score in solitaire: yes, even he is missional.
For we each have our missions, and our Mission; and in our scintillating free will, we always may elect to submit to our having been sent—or not. The idle office worker is submitting to his own self-appointed mission, which is his amusement. The dog, meanwhile, has submitted its own animal urges to a higher urge: the urge to please its master.
Much of what I write in the days to come will intersect with this idea of mission. And on occasion, language that I use will be colored by my own definitions of words such as “mission.” Latin and Greek make up the architecture of so much of our language; and our language is the architecture of our thought.
The nucleus of WOTD is a plain thing: words mean things, and we cannot rightly think, nor think rightly, about things, until our words are plain, precise, and True.
One of the electrons that orbits the nucleus of WOTD?
That you shall either wish they were much longer, or much shorter. These are rough and tumble—and note that nowhere are they explicitly “daily.” They are a Word Of The Day; here, as ever, the definite article is putting in a lot of work. For who can know The Day?
I shall write them when I am able. Lastly, time (and reader interest) permitting, I shall refurbish and republish particularly remarkable WOTDs from the past. Courtesy of one of those friends, all of them survived intact (I accidentally abandoned the WOTDs on my work computer upon departing that organization.) Amidst the archives are commentaries on funerals, Eastertide, social anguish/anxiety, tactical/situational awareness, parenting—they were written about many things.
Future WOTDs will be much less cluttered with formality. This is the form: now, the fashion(s) shall follow.