The Sixteen Commandments of Poon is a great list from an anonymous author on the Sosouave forums that has been a manosphere staple for many years now. Perhaps the most frequently cited commandment is number 3.

III. You shall make your mission, not your woman, your priority

The fundamental challenge with this commandment however, is that it presumes that all men have a clear and defined mission in their head that they can make the primary target to aim for in their life. The reality is that many men are like objects in a vacuum, they remain inert until acted upon by an external force. They simply have no idea what their mission is, and some do not even know what having a mission entails. How can one put one's mission before a woman if one lacks a mission and has a woman? Alternatively, how can one avoid making a woman one's mission if one lacks a mission?

Some men are born with an innate sense of purpose and know what they desire from an early age, but many do not pay much attention to having a mission, and instead opt to be adrift for years and sometimes decades. In some sense, this can be partly blamed on a social order where men are no longer raised by men, and thus are no longer trained by men to develop that sense of purpose. I've known many men who despite great talents and abilities do not live up to their potential.

A few years in my early twenties were spent in such drift, aimless, and without much purpose. However, various life experiences served to radically upend this view of the world. It appears that a man who finds himself adrift may only be awoken from his slumber by significant adversity and challenge. Frequently, the longer he has been in such a slumber, the greater the challenge he must face in order to prove himself worthy of progression.

Crucible Theory

Society has always had paths that men were supposed to follow in order to become full-fledged members of their social group. This often took the form of boys going with the men, and going through tests of manhood that symbolize his transition from child to man. Until fairly recently the male role was well-defined, in terms of actions and in terms of virtues, recently however, young men are presented with many, and quite contradictory messages. The female primary social order attempts to convince men that they should embrace their inner femininity, thus becoming an androgynous fusion of Anima and Animus. There are those who worship the individual mind and seek to create a state in which everything is permitted. Amidst this assault of contradictory messages, there is no wonder that young men find themselves confused, bewildered and often lost.

However, in a twist of irony that only the universe is capable of producing, this confusion, bewilderment and sense of vacuum serves as the crucible that the tests of manhood represented in times gone by.

The word crucible has multiple definitions of which all are relevant to this essay:

1 :  a vessel of a very refractory material (as porcelain) used for melting and calcining a substance that requires a high degree of heat  2 :  a severe test He's ready to face the crucible of the Olympics.  3 :  a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development

One of the core aspects of a crucible is that a boy faces a severe test, that he either succeeds or fails at, this then influences his behavior in either a positive or negative direction. We all find ourselves facing adversity in life, and those who are successful often come out with a stronger sense of purpose and determination. However, our society at present also trains people into expecting to have such solutions handed to them in the form of simple "to do" lists. This is somewhat interesting in that a mission is a highly personal thing.

No man can determine his mission without facing his personal crucible, and we all face it at different points of our life. Some face it very early others do not find themselves confronting it until they are in the twilight of their lives. A society where everyone receives a participation trophy robs those who are successful of their well-earned differentiation from the group, however, more severely it takes from those who are unsuccessful the challenge of rising up and claiming their place. If the reward for failure and the reward for success are the same, then it follows that there is no incentive to expend the effort and accepting the risk of failure to attempt victory.

Changing the Question

Many people ask themselves the question "What do I want to become" and then attempt to answer this question in a deductive form. This leads into a string of questions that are all centered around determining the overlap between passion and talent. What are you passionate about and talented at? Advice is often "Work at your passion and you will never work a day in your life" or similar platitudes that do not lead to progression. For the young nihilist, of whom there are many, they can scarcely identify a worthy passion, nor anything close to natural talent, as one does not see natural talent manifest without exposure to the correct circumstances.

When one asks "What is my passion" and "What are my talents?" and then proceed to work out the next steps, it is done with an idea that if you work at something you are passionate about, and something that you are good at, then it will naturally follow that you will find your mission and your happiness. However, this is not an iron-clad conclusion, it is a hope, that by pursuing passion and talent, thus being true to oneself, one will be rewarded by the universe for "doing the right thing".

The best advice I ever received on the topic was, "Ask yourself, what lifestyle do you want?" the reason why this question held such immense power for me is that while I had little knowledge of my own talents or passions, I knew very well what type of lifestyle I desired. This changes the question from being cause to being effect, in that your lifestyle is inevitably a consequence of choices that you have made, and thus is caused by those choices.

Once you identify the lifestyle that is desired, it it possible to break this down into concrete areas, such as finances, level of freedom, relationships and many other factors. Once this breakdown has been conducted, one can identify concrete action that can be taken to move towards these goals. Instead of asking what my mission was, I asked what outcomes I desired from my mission. The power of asking the right questions and thus reframing your predicament is a great ability to have.

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