"Mission Alignment"

Not every tradeoff is false

In a few days I will move across the world. Doing that meant letting go of the most important person in my life. I see happy couples and hope they can fully be themselves with each other. But if I’d stayed I wouldn’t have been.

People talk about mission alignment as a checkbox. “Are they AGI pilled enough?”, “Are they ready to make big career moves to help the world?” But this feels like a disservice. A mission is THE thing that gives purpose. It’s your calling. It’s not about how much Lesswrong you’ve read or how many EAGs you’ve attended, it’s about who you fundamentally are.

I didn’t know who that was for me for a long time. I felt lost and alone and confused. Nihilism and isolation were an answer to hopelessness, an active ignorance. Because if something actually mattered how could I live up to that responsibility?

But you can only live in denial and face its harsh cognitive dissonance for so long.

Identity is confusing. Stepping out of ignorance and binaries is liberating and terrifying. It’s leaping out of a cage into freefall. But the view’s prettier.

So what grounds me if I’m always falling?

Growing up with Church Leaders as parents I wasn’t a stranger to hearing about spirituality. To me their faith was implausible, their certainty and conviction bewildering. I would hear people give their testimony of finding God with such passion. My brother’s testimony spoke of a fire in him.

I know that fire now. I don’t call it God, but I feel the burning ambition. I’m grounded by a need for impact. I fall with purpose, with conviction, with fear and excitement and certainty that sentient life must be preserved and allowed to flourish.

I am not mission aligned in a tick box sense. I am defined by the mission and ready to do anything for it.

I couldn’t stay in the UK with the person who made me realise who I am and how deep my need for impact goes. It wouldn’t have been ME in the relationship, but the Sam who hid in the safety of ignorance and stasis. I couldn’t turn away from my calling to have an impact because that would fundamentally be a betrayal of who I am.

Some tradeoffs aren’t false, they hurt and they force you to sacrifice something that means the world to you for you to do something meaningful for the world.