My oldest sister, Carol, had Downs Syndrome. She was always smiling and willing to help around the house. When she spoke, there was not a trace of artifice. She could never lie and whatever she said came from the heart.
From time to time, I would wonder what was Carol’s mission on earth? She obviously was very limited mentally, yet she had a knack of bringing out the best in others. I thought that perhaps, from the aspect of eternity, her mission was to make better anyone who had the good fortune to know her, to make that person more sensitive, more caring about other people, and more grateful for their own mental health. An encounter with Carol left the other person feeling blessed and appreciative about leading a normal life.
Finding one’s mission in life is the subject of Sun Dogs, a dramedy about Ned Chipley, a mentally challenged young man who wants to join the Marines. He sees his mission in life as saving lives, but he lacks the intellectual ability to actually serve in the armed forces. When he visits the Marine recruiting office, Master Sgt. Jenkins is reluctant to tell Ned that he does not qualify for soldiering. Instead, he tells Ned that he is needed on the home front to search for secret terrorists cells in civilian locations. In this way, Ned will function as a secret operative. Ned takes this charge very seriously.
Sgt. Jenkins gives Ned a deck of cards with pictures of the leading terrorists in the world. This becomes Ned’s “to-do” list as he searches out suspicious individuals who look like people depicted in his deck of cards.
Although Ned’s behavior is strange and idiosyncratic, he does listen to people who offer advice. He may be intellectually slow, but he does pay attention to the voice of others and gleans wisdom from them. For example, after he tells a friend that he feels his life’s mission is to save lives, the friend gives him mathematical proof that, over a span of ten years, 3000 people jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, and Ned may have an opportunity to prevent those tragedies. It is a story he does not forget.
Almost all the characters in the film are decent. There are no villains, and most of the people are kind and sensitive to Ned’s disabilities and his mistakes in judgment. They, too, are flawed, but not in a terminal sense. They are on their own journeys to figure out the purpose of their own lives. They are good people who simply want more out of life. A seminal line, repeated at several points in the narrative, is that “everybody needs a purpose.” In Sun Dogs, we witness the decisions people make to define for themselves a worthy mission in life.
Jewish teachings encourage people to consider what is their mission in life. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks astutely observes that there is a difference between what we are good at and what we are called upon to do: “We can be good at many things, but what gives a life direction and meaning is a sense of mission, of something we are called on to do.” He continues: “Each of us is different. Therefore, we each have unique talents and skills to bring to the world. The fact that I am here, in this place, at this time, with these abilities, is not accidental. There is a task to perform, and God is calling us to it. Where what we want to do meets what needs to be done, that is where God wants us to be.”
Michael Novak, an American Catholic philosopher, suggested asking yourself three questions to discover your calling: is it unique to you; do you have a talent for it; and does it give you a sense of enjoyment and renewed energy? Moreover, it is important to realize that you may not discover your purpose immediately. You may have to make many mistakes before you find your true mission in life.
Indeed, God gave each of us a task. There is specific work for us to do, kindness to share, loneliness to abate, pain to assuage, and broken spirits to lift. In Sun Dogs, Ned Chipley ultimately discovers his life’s purpose; his story is worth contemplating.
Kosher Movies 