August 10, 2004
Exploring Our Life Mission—For Free
Exploring Our Life Mission—For Free
Readers who live on what is commonly referred to as Planet Earth may not be aware of “Spirit of Change: New England’s Holistic Magazine.” Recently, a correspondent from our Bangor (ME) office sent us the July/August 2004 number of this venerable publication.For those of you unacquainted with this delightful—nay, life-changing—periodical, let us give you a brief survey of its contents. “Spirit of Change” appears to be chock-a-block with discussions of holistic medicine, stress, and touchy-feely politics. As a free publication, moreover, “Spirit of Change” is replete with advertising, some of it rather fetching indeed.
Naturally, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” carefully hunted through the magazine, hoping to come upon an advertisement that claimed to heal our inner children.
No such luck. But we did find a few choice bits of New Age mysticism: On page five of said publication, we encountered an advert headed “Reading the Signs of Destiny.” Wow: Reading the signs of destiny! Will that help us with our gambling habit? It turns out, however, that this five-day introduction to the “art” of divination costs $950, and takes place in Connecticut, of all places. If you live in Bridgeport, Connecticut, we already know what your destiny is going to be, and it ain’t good.
Accordingly, we moved on to page 31, which featured another intriguing advertisement. The top of it reads: “Exploring Your Life Mission: Bringing Greater Clarity to Your Life and Work,” and is run under the auspices of Marcia Goldberg and Richard Michaels, two “certified life coaches.”
This made us wonder: What sort of training must one undergo to become a “certified life coach”? Can you get this degree from the School of Hard Knocks? (Or the School of Hard Knox, Tennesee?)
But we digress. Ms. Goldberg’s and Mr. Michaels’ advertisement sports eight goals that “Exploring Your Life Mission” can accomplish. Naturally, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” were intrigued. Still, as it appears to be our “life mission” to be poor, we decided to skip the seminar, and to reach these eight goals on our own.
The following, then, is our unofficial version of “Exploring Your Life Mission.” We must inform our readers that we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are untrained professionals; don’t try this at home.
Goal One: “Inquire into who you are and your contribution to the world”
The first part of Goal One is really easy: We are the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” of course. Accordingly, we may move on to discuss our “contribution to the world.” Well, we suppose that we spread mirth, joy, and hatred to the world—although “the world” is a bit of an overstatement, given the number of hits we receive each day. Still, that’s our goal, and, like duct tape, we’re sticking to it.
Goal Two: “Increase receptivity to the messages of body-mind-spirit”
Okay, you’ve totally lost us. Although Goal One was written in straightforward prose, the ghosts of New Age appear to be haunting Goal Two. In fact, we feel as if we should respond to this goal with our own barrage of New Age tomfoolery: We hope the herbal essence of our spirit voice will increase our Shiatsu polarity. (Not bad, eh?)
Goal Three: “Deepen connection to your core self”
Alright. Done.
Goal Four: “Identify your Building Blocks of Fulfillment”
Hmmm. So Ms. Goldberg and Mr. Michaels want us to point to our Building Blocks of Fulfillment? Not our building blocks of fulfillment, mind you, but our Building Blocks of Fulfillment. Well, we don’t want to get too big for our britches, but may we humbly identify missing all future Andrew Lloyd-Webber musicals as one of our sacred Building Blocks? Also, we would be pleased as peaches if we never heard another teenager use the word “like.”
Goal Five: “Create a personal mission statement”
“We, the crack young staff of ‘The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,’ endeavor to expose New Age charlatans wherever we may find them. We hope that Ms. Goldberg and Mr. Michaels will help us with this daunting undertaking.”
Goal Six: “Expand your perspectives beyond habitual thinking”
Gee. Our first impression would be to write this off as a bunch of pseudo-intellectual bunk, but that would be rather habitual for us. So, let us instead refer to it as rebarbative persiflage. There: That ought to expand our perspectives.
Goal Seven: “Bring your mission into your personal and business life”
Done.
Goal Eight: “Create steps to keep your inspiration alive”
Currently, the junior editors at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”—let's just call them “Chip”—are mixing up some concrete, with which we shall construct some steps, per order of Ms. Goldberg and Mr. Michaels. Frankly, though, this building project hasn’t exactly kept our collective “inspiration alive.” But, heck, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Or something.
Well, dear reader, there you have it: The crack young staff has explored its “life mission” free of charge. As a reward for our hard work, we think we’ll pop over to the local health food store and treat ourselves to a shot of wheat-grass.