The truck was loaded, the gas tank full, and the morning sun breaking. We left out of Clyde Back & Sons, headed for the big highway that ran from Des Moines to the Mississippi, then on to southern Indiana. Uncle Bud had been assigned a mission:
1. Haul this load of seed-corn to the farmer who ordered it.
2. Bring back the truck, a certificate of delivery, and the money.
“Yes sir, can do” said Uncle Bud”. He didn’t say it in those exact words, but the meaning was the same.
Uncle Bud invited me along.
The trip took several days. Uncle Bud never drove very fast and beside that, all the main roads from the middle of Iowa to southern Indiana were two-lane blacktops. Away from towns the roads were mostly gravel or dirt. Turnpikes & Interstates were future-dreams.
I was eight years old. It was a big adventure for me.
It made me think of Pony Express riders galloping mail from here to there across the unforgiving prairie, or Sea Captains braving wind & pitiless waves to deliver needful cargo from one great port to another. All of my fuzzy imaginings were pulsing with drama. The actual trip wasn’t all that dramatic, but it was fun.
It felt free, rolling down the road, warm breezes blowing, new sights coming and going, a new world up ahead, I had a great time. My most clear memory is of a single stop for lunch at a roadside diner. I had a fried egg sandwich with ketchup, and a glass of iced tea. Uncle Bud had iced tea and . . . I don’t know what. My memory of the rest of the journey is hazy.
Isn’t it strange what we remember.
That trip gave me a first look into a mode of work
and life I didn’t really understand until years later. I knew about missions. I read about all sorts of missions in the stories of adventure I read. I had not connected any of them to making
a living. Missions are paid for, but they’re not the same as employment. Missions require personal responsibility in way that the just-keep-marching responsibility of a day job does not.
When you’re on a mission you’re in charge of the mission. When you’re on a day job you’re in charge of nothing.
I like being in charge. I like the idea of mission.
Missions can last for hours, months, or years. The work can be physical, mental, or both. Every building contractor is doing mission work. Every free-lancer is doing mission work. Soldiers-of-fortune, from the Condottieri of the Italian Renaissance to those original free-lancers, the Medieval Knights Errant, were doing mission work. My own free-lance missions of design and writing weren’t bellicose, but the model of Contract is the same.
Employees are paid steady wages to work at someone else’s business. Mission workers work for their own business. They make contracts to sell their abilities to those willing to pay. They don’t sell themselves.
As I count back my own work history, I’ve had more mission work than day-to-day employment. I’m grateful for that, and not surprised. The work of mission attracts me as more interesting and honorable than the routine work of day-to-day sameness.
I understand the attraction of steady wages over the uncertainty of missions. I prefer the certainty of freedom over the occasional risk of uncertain renumeration. My assessment
is not the slightest bit fair, but it is what I think.
The great appeal of mission work for me is the satisfaction of being Captain of your own destiny. You accept
the mission by your own free will, as one free man to another.
“Do this service for us and we will pay you accordingly”.
To me, the idea of willful contract between free men seems the most honorable business plan possible. Some may ask, “isn’t accepting employment the same as a contract”? No, it’s not. In a day-to-day job you’re boxed into the very same space and surrounded by the very same people, with the very same rules, day after day.
When on a mission. You’re free to meet whomever you need to meet, and go wherever you need to go, You roll at will, down new byways, fresh breezes blowing, new sights coming and going. The only requirement – complete the mission.
You’re on an adventure.
You’re a free agent.
What could be better.
This is your mission
should you oose to accept it.
Can do!