Nicholas Langan Professor Chan Moreau FYE 28 April 2022 The Origin and Future of My Mission Moreau this semester has forced me to think about what I want to do with my life by making me create a personal mission statement. The mission statement that I came up with and am planning to stick by is: In my next 3 years at the University of Notre Dame and beyond, I will strive to help those less fortunate than me by using the many different resources at my disposal. I plan to work for a local habitat for humanity chapter as well as partake in Urban Plunges into the South Bend community. I will do this because I believe that everyone deserves the same opportunities in life and it is my responsibility to help ensure that this is true. This mission statement was inspired by all of the experiences I have had in my life as well as the different weeks of Moreau this semester. When I was first attempting to think of my mission statement, I saw it as a somewhat daunting task. Then, I thought back to my first week of Moreau this year when I learned that “The ability to gather information, which used to be so crucial, is now far less important than the ability to sift through it.” (Why We Need to Slow Down our Lives by Pico Iyer - Moreau FYE Week 1). This quote showed me that I need to sit back and really think about all the things that I have experienced in life and carefully examine what this says about me and what I think I should work to do in the future. Once I had an idea about what I wanted to try and do, I hit the roadblock of how I was supposed to accomplish such a thing. To help me get around this problem, I went back to my week 2 Moreau writing and I found a great quote from someone at the University of Notre Dame named Matt Conaghan who figured out a way to use his specialty and field of expertise to help others. In a quote from the Notre https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/ Dame website, it states that “Conaghan leads the conception, creation, and promotion of marketing materials while also focusing on design and charity growth” ( Domer Dozen quote by Matt Conaghan - Moreau FYE Week 2). I realized that Matt was using his major and his skill set to grow himself and help those around him that needed it most, something that I realized I could also accomplish. At this point, I was considering whether this was a life that I wanted to live. I understood that it was good to help others, but would I really find joy in my actions? This got me thinking about what joy really was. I knew it was not the exact same thing as happiness because it was deeper than that, but I could not really put a definition to it. Luckily, in week 3 of Moreau I remembered that I found an exact definition of joy. This source said that joy was “the sense of the rightness of the way in which one is living one’s life” (Three Key Question by Fr. Michael Himes - Moreau FYE Week 3). After reading this, I realized that if I believed that what I was doing in life was the right thing to do by others, I would find joy. I certainly believe that helping others is acting in a correct way, so I therefore will find joy in helping others. Now I knew that I wanted to help people through whatever I decided to do, but how was I to decide what to do? I was stuck. I was not sure how to figure out what I would enjoy doing in the future. Then I found a website that said “you have to know yourself first – your values, interests, personality, and skills (VIPS) – before you can make effective career choices” (Navigating Your Career Journey by Meruelo Family Center for Career Development - Moreau FYE Week 4). This made a lot of sense to me. Before making such an important decision in my life, it is important to really understand myself and what I value. I can only make a decision that is best for me if I know what I value and what I am good at. Part of knowing who you are is what other people think about you. People you know, especially those that are close to you like your family, know you almost as well as you know yourself. They can tell you what you are good at and what you are not. They are a completely unbiased source that will tell you the truth about yourself, sometimes truths that you don’t want to admit. Talking to those close to you will help you to learn even more about yourself and understand yourself in a way that will help you make decisions that are most beneficial for yourself and others. For example, in week 5 of Moreau, we were https://domerdozen.nd.edu/ https://undergradcareers.nd.edu/navigating-your-career-journey---moreau/ tasked with having one of these conversations. In this conversation, my sister told me that she thought that I valued helping others most, which helped me create my mission statement that will guide me through the rest of my life, especially the next three years. Once I knew that I needed to incorporate helping others into this mission statement, I just had to figure out in what way I was going to do that. Although using other people to learn about yourself is important, there is definitely the need to take time to think by yourself. The only problem is, I am so busy during the day that I struggle to find time to really self-reflect. This began to stress me out because I had no time to learn about myself, but then I came across a source in week 6 of Moreau that said, “the more time the participants spend in introspection, the less self-knowledge they have.” (Yes There's a Wrong Way by Tasha Eurich - Moreau FYE Week 6). This completely changed the game for me. This made me realize that I did not need a large amount of time to self-reflect because if I take too much time, I may start to overthink things. Taking only a little amount of time to self-reflect is perfect because it makes me think about only the most important things. After doing this, it made creating a mission statement easier because it made what I want to do much clearer. I realized that in the coming years of my life, I wanted to do all I could to help others while continuing to better myself through education and through being kind to others. At this point in my consideration of my future, I realized that I would need other people to help me along the way. But how would I know who and how many people I should have there to help me? I know that at this point in my life, I have a solid group of people around me, but should I be expanding this group of people? I ended up running across a quote from Pope Francis that really helped me figure out what to make of this situation. The quote stated that we need to “remember that the ‘other’ is not a statistic, or a number” (Why the Only Future Worth Building Includes Everyone by Pope Francis - Moreau FYE Week 7). After reading this, I was a little astonished that I had not realized this before. Everyone on this Earth is equal to the other, so why not develop a relationship with everyone? Sure, the strength of each relationship won’t be the same, but there is not a person on this Earth that I should disregard or not try to make a relationship with. This clarified that in my future as I strive to achieve my https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/ https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript mission statement, I should continue to try and create a relationship with everyone I meet as it may further me along my journey and allow me to gain the input and ideas of all different types of people. These relationships that I would form would help me answer the next question I had about my future. I thought to myself, would if I set all of these goals and aspirations and end up failing all of the people that I set out to help? The answer to this question is truly beautiful. All of these people that I am going to help will be there to help me when I need it most. They will be there to support me in my hardest times because I was there for them. A great example of this comment was a quote from our week 9 source stating, “the people I had so earnestly come to serve (and whose lives I had imagined transforming) had to take care of me” (Teaching Accompaniment: A Learning Journey Today by Professor Steve Reifenberg - Moreau FYE Week 9). This professor talked about when he found himself in a tough situation in life, all of the people that he had helped up to that point in his life came to his aid and helped him. So, in a way, he did slightly fail on his goals, but instead of turning the other way, all of the people in his life that he had helped rushed to his aid. I realized that in the future, if I were to fail in some way at helping those who needed it or ended up in a bad situation myself, all the people that I had helped at one point would be ready and willing to come to my aid. This prospect allowed me to look towards my future at Notre Dame and beyond without fear of failure. At this point, I knew that I wanted to help others, but I did not have a guiding principle that could help guide me along the way. To find this principle that would help lead me and my endeavors to live a life well-lived, I turned to week 10 of Moreau. In week 10, we took time to really find a principle or idea that would guide our future adventures. As a very religious person, I naturally gravitated towards the golden rule which states that we should “treat others as we desire to be treated” (The Spirit of Inclusion at Notre Dame, du lac – Moreau FYE Week 10). This principle played perfectly into everything I had already determined up to that point. By treating others in a respectful way, I would be able to create valuable relationships in the future and I would be inspired to help others because I would want them to do the same thing to me. I realized that by following the word of God and treating everyone as I would want to be treated, I would be well on my way to living a life well-lived. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hZbSdVImfn2hZDqMrdL96dZCNOtHuf6C-lg3sH-Rs30/edit https://dulac.nd.edu/university-mission-and-vision/spirit-of-inclusion/ https://dulac.nd.edu/university-mission-and-vision/spirit-of-inclusion/ After all of this deliberation, I felt like I was in a good spot. I realized that I knew what I needed to do to put myself on a path to live a life well-lived. There were only a few details that I needed to work out. One of the most important details was figuring out what type of environment I needed to put myself in to ensure that I could continue to grow in the future and could carry out this service to others that I wanted to. While I contemplated this, I came across a reading that talked about the importance of avoiding something called an Echo Chamber. An Echo Chamber is “a social structure from which relative voices have been actively discredited.” (How to Avoid an Echo Chamber by Paul Blaschko - Moreau Week 11). If I were to put myself in a situation where I was in an Echo Chamber, I would not be able to freely develop my opinions and ideas to be my own. Instead, I would be forced to believe in the same things as those around me for fear of being cast out for disagreeing. In order to live a life well-lived in the future, I need to be able to freely think and change my views as I learn. After reading this, I realized just how imperative it is that I avoid this situation at all costs. I need to maintain my freedom of thought and speech so that I can learn and adapt to the ever-changing world without being stuck in one mindset. Now that I know what I would like to do in life, how do I gather the courage to accomplish my goals? Unlike some people in this world, I am lucky to go to one of the best Universities in the country that provides me with endless resources. A great example of these resources at work comes from week 12 of Moreau where I read an article that said, “today, Notre Dame Law School equips lawyers from all around the world with the training and tools they need to fight for human rights.” (I am George Floyd. Except, I can Breathe. And I can do Something by Dean G. Marcus Cole - Moreau FYE Week 12). This great University that I am at has so many different resources that I can use to accomplish my goal of helping others. This is where my specific examples in my mission statement come from. I realize that I can participate in things such as Habitat for Humanity and Urban Plunge here at Notre Dame to begin to make a difference in my community. These two service programs are only the start. I will continue to explore different ways in which I can start to help those around me who need it most in order to find myself living a life well-lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaIVxQcqnLs&t=1s https://law.nd.edu/news-events/news/dean-g-marcus-cole-i-am-george-floyd-except-i-can-breathe-and-i-can-do-something/ https://law.nd.edu/news-events/news/dean-g-marcus-cole-i-am-george-floyd-except-i-can-breathe-and-i-can-do-something/ In this semester of Moreau, I discovered what living a life well-lived really means to me. It means going out into the world and helping those in need in every way possible using all of the resources at my disposal. This semester of Moreau has taught me that I need to go out of my way to help others and not be selfish in my actions. I need to create a community around me that can rely on me and that I can rely on. At the end of the day, I think that this is what a life well-lived comes out to. If everyone around me knows that they can rely on me for help and I know that I can be picked up in my lowest times by those around me, I truly believe that I would be living a life well-lived.