The purpose of our existence is to become like Heavenly Father. We do that through aligning our will to his, or as we say in my nonprofit management class, adopting his mission statement as our own. Heavenly Father's mission statement is Moses 1:39 "Behold, this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." In other words, the most important thing to Heavenly Father is us. He wants us to be happy and he wants us to make it back to him. That is his goal. Therefore, that should be our goal, not only to get ourselves back to Heavenly Father, but to help others get back as well and to be happy and help others to be happy along the way.
As I was thinking about that this weekend and what I need to do to apply that into my daily living, I realized this principle also applies to my project. First of all, it adds a whole not level to the ethics issue. If my project has absolutely no potential to help anyone, why would I pursue it? Before this point, I've kind of been looking at the IRB proposal as a hoop to jump through because of stupid, inconsiderate people that have done things in the past no normal human would ever consider. But a project really should be more than just the absence of an ethical issue. If you think about it from a religious standpoint, it should somehow contribute to bringing Heavenly Father's children closer to him or to make them happier along the way. Otherwise, why waste your time? So I started thinking about this. How is my project designed to further that mission? I've said this before, but I don't pretend to believe that my project is going to change the world. There's just no way that it could with only one completely inexperienced person running it and with absolutely no funding to speak of. So maybe I will stumble on an aspect of the problem that nobody has thought of before and I'll be able to contribute to the literature, but probably what I have to say won't be terribly significant. However, through this project, I will be learning things that even if they don't impact anyone else right now will impact me, will help me to develop the skills I need that will be able to help me make a difference in the future.
That being said, the other thing I realized this weekend is that this process of helping people is most effective when it happens one by one. It's like missionaries when they say that the numbers don't count, because they really don't. The most important thing is to touch people one by one. This is something that I can do. I can't write it into my IRB proposal, but when I go to South Africa, I can focus on building real and meaningful relationships with the people I meet. Many of them will be HIV positive women with families they are trying to take care of. The probability that I will be able to solve all of their problems is slim to none, but maybe I can do something, be a someone that will somehow lift their sights higher than where they are now.
I don't know . . . it's a complicated issue. I guess that's what happens when you're a little bit of an idealist and you really do want to affect peoples' lives for the better.
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