JumpStart Elmo's Birthday (2/3/25)

QUOTE:  "In times of crisis, people reach for meaning.  Meaning is strength.  Our survival may depend on our seeking and finding it." (Viktor E. Frankl)

MESSAGE:  
Many people are experiencing a Crisis of Meaning these days, especially since COVID.

This is nothing new.  Whether you call it suffering (Buddhism & Nietzsche), an existential crisis (French philosophers like Sartre), the search for happiness (pretty much every personal experience), enlightenment (various times in history and philosophies), or a ‘God-sized hole in your heart’ (philosopher Blaise Pascal), it’s the result of what we have/are not coinciding with what we want/have.

I’ve written about this other places, and there are libraries worth of books on the subject.  Here’s a quick summary of my thinking on this Meaning Crisis:

• Everyone longs for wholeness.
• Everyone is inherently whole (recently the word ‘enough’ takes the place of ‘whole’); we just can’t see that for whatever reason, so we feel lacking.
• We try to fill that lack with tangible objects, relationships, or experiences but soon discover that those don’t really fill the need.
• At the same time, ephemeral objects, relationships, and experiences are clamoring for our attention in the form of social media, the Internet, etc. We find that while those SEEM to fill the void, they are actually expanding it.
• We then find ourselves more alone than before and start questioning, “Why?”
• We need to feel as though we matter and that other people/ideas/things matter to us in a reciprocal relationship.  
• If we don’t take care of our own emotional and spiritual health, we give it up to others.  Our health is like buckets that can’t remain empty.  If we don’t keep them full with what is important and what matters to us, others will put whatever they want into them. When we abdicate responsibility, we can’t complain that we still feel empty - or even worse than before - because we are responsible for ourselves.

Here are three questions (from Dr. John Vervaeke) you can use as a litmus test to see if something really matters to you:

1. What do you want to exist even if you don’t (exist)?
2. How really real is it?
3. How connected are you?  How much do you matter to it, and how much of a difference does it make to you?

Children would be an obvious answer to these questions. We will tank our subjective well-being, our personal safety, our wealth and security in order to our kids to thrive, and yet we don’t mind because they matter.

We need to surround ourselves with people, relationships, and values that matter.  And we need to teach young people through modeling and explicit instruction that REAL matters, too.

THIS WEEK, TRY THIS:  The next time you have free time, consider this: before you spend time on something, does it matter to you?  If not, are you OK with spending time with it?  If you find yourself with a free evening and choose to spend a couple hours at night scrolling social media, that’s a whole lot better than just looking up two hours later and realizing you just spent hours on your phone. Being present and intentional is key!

DAD JOKE:    I saw an ad for a casket and thought, "That's the last thing I need!"