New Book Review: "Hero on a Mission"

New book review for Hero on a MIssion: A Path to a Meaningful Life, by Donald Miller, HarperCollins Leadership, 2022:

Copy provided by Amazon.

Just after I had first started reading through this book, someone commented to me that they had also started reading another book, entitled "Man's Search for Meaning", by Victor Frankl. In response, I remarked on a coincidence: Frankl's book is not only cited throughout "Hero on a Mission", the author of this other book is actually cited at the outset within the introductory pages. While I had heard about Frankl's book, I had also never felt any interest in reading it, because I've not only already read numerous war-themed autobiographies, I've also heard spoken accounts directly from victims of the second world war and immediate post-war period from my own family members, who suffered extreme hardships.

However, upon hearing about Frank's book again, I took a closer look to determine whether I might want to read it as a personal follow-up to "Hero on a Mission", and came to the same conclusion. In my view, the differentiator between these two works is the practicality that Miller seeks to provide to readers. Frankl's account of his experiences is provided in the first part of his book, and a paper on logotherapy is provided in the second part, but at this point I'm not interested in hearing more war stories or theories about a particular life philosophy, and am instead interested in hearing what logotherapy, the therapy created by Frankl, might look like from a practical perspective as applied to one's life.

Miller doesn't explain logotherapy in his introduction, but explains Frankl's pragmatic, threefold formula to experience a life of meaning in the third chapter: (1) "take action creating a work or performing a deed, (2) experience something or encounter someone that you find captivating and that pulls you out of yourself, and (3) "have an optimistic attitude toward the inevitable: challenges and suffering you will experience in life." And later in this chapter, the author makes these three elements more relatable as he discusses the life plan he has been using for the last ten years, a plan that continues to evolve, and a plan without which he feels his personal story would "devolve in entropy and ultimately a narrative void. The existential vacuum."

(1) "Life invites us to be important and necessary. If we wake up each day and have a task to accomplish, especially a task in which other people are involved or without which other people might somehow suffer, we become necessary in the world. We sense we have a purpose (because we do). By requiring a work or a deed, I think Frankl was saying: Get yourself a great reason to wake up and get out of bed in the morning. If you do, it will help you avoid the existential vacuum."

(2) "We should acknowledge that we are not alone in this world and in fact the world and the stories unfolding upon it inspire awe. We all know the greatest experiences we have in life are dramatically enhanced if they are shared with others. According to Frankl, to experience meaning, we should get involved with a small group of people we love and who love us, or we should find something that invites our focus beyond ourselves to the beauty of the world around us. A lone walk through the forest is good for the soul just as a trip to a gallery can offer inspiration and a sense of mental expansion. The point is this: encounter something that pulls you out of yourself so that you world becomes larger."

(3) "While I've found each of the three elements of Frankl's formula helpful, it's this last one that helped me transform the most. Essentially, Frankl argued there was no negative event that could happen to us that could not be somehow redeemed. "Redeemed" is my word, not his, but I think it's fitting. By redeemed I mean that, as humans, we are able to take the most painful of tragedies and turn them into something meaningful. Frankl believed that while tragedies should be acknowledged and grieved, they can also produce something beneficial. This doesn't mean tragedies are good. Nobody wants or should have to experience a tragedy. It only means that from the ashes of our tragedies we can create something beautiful, and by creating something meaningful with our pain we begin the process of healing our wounds."

Just recently, I mentioned in my review of "Do Something for Nothing: Seeing Beneath the Surface of Homelessness, through the Simple Act of a Haircut", by Joshua Coombes, that one of the author's passages reminded me of Romans 5:3-5: "…we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame…". Interestingly, these verses also correlate with the third part of Frankl's formula. The hardships my family has experienced have been extremely challenging, and in the midst of these experiences, seemingly unbearable. But what's this? Hardship is actually the first step in a sequence, if we permit the rest of this sequence to play out. 

The author's presentation is broken down into sixteen chapters across a story's three acts: (1) "how to create a life of meaning", (2) "create your life plan", and (3) "your life plan and daily planner." In the first act, the author discusses the four roles we play in life – the victim, the villain, the hero, and the guide – followed by a focus on the hero, who accepts their own agency, chooses a life of meaning, and knows what they want. In the second act, the author discusses the eulogy, short-term and long-term visions, and the daily planner, and in the third act lays out the templates for each of these tools.

One of the most impactful chapters for me is the fourteenth chapter. While the role of the guide is discussed earlier in the book, the focus up until this point is the role of the hero. "Life requires experts. We need people around us who know what they are doing and can save us from our own mistakes. In a way this book has been deceptive. It has taught you to become a hero on a mission even though the hero is not the most evolved role. The most aspirational role for any of us is the role of guide. So why spend so much time teaching people to live as heroes when the goal of life is to become the guide? The reason is, of course, that we cannot become guides unless we have lived as heroes on a mission."

The author later comments that "Victor Frankl's ideas do not ensure that life will go well for us. They simply ensure that we experience meaning whether or not life goes well. His theories, after all, were crystalized in a concentration camp. Mental, physical, and spiritual competence happens when we move into the challenges life offers us. Victims do not face these challenges because they cannot. Villains cause many of these challenges. Heroes walk into and through the challenges and are transformed in the process. Guides, then, teach heroes all they know about how to surmount the challenges. Guides teach us how to have courage because they have lived a life of courage themselves. The reason we want to live as heroes on a mission is, the more we do so, the sooner we will transform into guides."

Subsequently, Miller presents the four characteristics he believes are most critical to develop in order to help others: experience, wisdom, empathy, and sacrifice. I particularly appreciated his explanations of wisdom and sacrifice, perhaps because, while I personally feel as though I'm well on my way in all these areas, I also feel more developed in the other two areas. On wisdom, for example, the author comments that "we know a hero is going to have to gain strength in order to meet the villain as an equal. The hero will have to be strong and wise, and the only way to gain strength and wisdom is to fail and then succeed, over and over." While as a software developer and innovator the need for failure comes naturally for me in the workplace, I can't say the same for life in general.

In the closing paragraphs of the sixteenth chapter, as he wraps up his presentation, the author makes some especially profound statements. "Life can be very difficult, I know. There are tragedies all around us. There is darkness. But don't forget, there is also light. We get to participate in the making of that light. When the existential vacuum comes for you, and it will, remember there is a hope that is very real in the world. We can always make meaning." Interestingly, Frankl focuses on "meaning", and Miller periodically uses the term "purpose" somewhat interchangeably, but he clarifies his intent in the third chapter, something for readers to ponder: "meaning feels like purpose."

"When I experience meaning, my life feels as though it is playing an important role in an important story. I have never been able to prove that sense of purpose is justified, but it hardly matters. When I am experiencing meaning, it *feels* as though my life is a story that is interesting to myself and also good for the world." While I don't particularly care for this explanation, I also value Miller's further thoughts on the subject. "How many people sit in church pews hearing lectures about God only to return home and feel restless? And why? Perhaps it is because we do not experience meaning by studying meaning. Rather, we experience meaning by taking action. Even Jesus said *follow* Me rather than *figure Me out*. What if the experience of meaning requires action?"