My life will matter only if I can show love and meaning to others

When I die, nobody is going to care what I did with my life.

They’re not going to care about the achievements I was once so proud of. They’re not going to remember the talent that once impressed me so much about myself. Nobody is going to know or care what my IQ was.

The only thing people will remember about me — if they remember anything at all — is how I’ve made them feel. The only way I’m going to matter to others is if I’ve somehow shown genuine love to them or helped them find meaning in their own lives.

I’ve recently realized that I’ve had it all wrong for a long time. I’ve been letting my ego get in the way of being the person I need to be. I understand how that happened — and I’ll tell you about that in a minute — but the bottom line is that I’ve been chasing the wrong things.

I’ve wanted to be a star. I’ve wanted to be important. I craved the feeling of mattering to others, so I’ve unconsciously pursued a kind of success that would matter only to the wounded heart of my hidden inner child.

For a long time, I’ve struggled with understanding what I’m trying to do — with writing, film, video, art. Without realizing it, I was allowing myself to be held back by emotional baggage from childhood.

I wanted very visible success. I wanted to be the center of attention. I wanted you to admire me and love me and praise me. And I see now that this ego dysfunction was getting in the way of what I need to be doing.

I have some important things I need to say to this world — at least to the people who see the world as I do — and my need to be admired has gotten in the way of what I need to say. Right now, I’m trying to set aside my bruised ego so that I might be able to make a difference in the world around me. At least for some small number of you.

I’m having to learn some more humility. That seems like a lifelong pattern. Maybe I’m a slow learner.

When I was young, I was pretty impressed with myself. What were the words I expected to be applied to my life? Genius. Talent. Success. Fame. Glory.

I understand that this need for self-glorification came entirely from a wounded ego. I felt terrible about myself as a child, so this is the way I compensated. I lived with it for so long that it became invisible to me.

As a child, I felt weak. I felt powerless. I felt unimportant. I felt shame. I didn’t have words for all those things, but I recognize them today in the wounds I hid back then — wounds that I’ve carried with me all my life.

When I felt those ways — as an immature child — I turned to the only things that seemed to make me feel good about myself. Intelligence. Talent. Competence. Achievement.

I pursued all those things and made them my identity. I tried to make them fill the hole created by the shame and humiliation I felt. Somehow, I was going to show everyone. They were going to admire me. They were going to praise me. But no matter what I did, it was never enough.

I’ve been like a preacher who cared more about making himself popular and loved and admired than he cared about the sheep who were supposed to be his flock. But it’s finally gotten through my thick skull that the message matters far more than the messenger.

I know how I could be popular and successful in today’s media environment. I would need to be an entertainer who tells people what they want to hear. But that is a shallow and empty path for someone who wants to make a difference in the world. I can’t do it. And I’ve realized that I can’t deliver the message that matters to me and be a star.

I can be a successful and popular “star” who’s the center of attention — or I can be a humble servant delivering an unpopular message I believe people need to hear. I can’t do both. To save my own sanity — and to be the man I need to be — I have to “preach” a message that almost nobody is going to listen to.

This culture is hopelessly dysfunctional. For many reasons, I believe we are doomed as a society. Things are going to get much worse before they get better. I don’t believe there’s anything we can do now to change that. I don’t look forward to it. I dread what life might be like when its collapse gets here.

Most of the people of our culture are so enmeshed in the cultural dysfunction that their personal lives are just as diseased and dysfunctional as the larger culture is. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I believe it’s possible to walk away from the lies of our culture. I believe it’s possible to rediscover values and principles which used to enrich the lives of individuals with good hearts and sound minds.

I believe it’s possible for you and for me to live entirely different lives — of love, peace, belonging, freedom — in the midst of these troubled times. But that will require us to change ourselves. It will require rejecting much of what seems normal and acceptable in our culture.

It will mean looking to the past to rediscover some things of eternal value and objective truth.

Very few people want to hear anything like this, but it’s the message I need to deliver. And that’s what I’m going to do.

I don’t know if anybody will listen. I know it won’t make me popular. It won’t make me a star. But maybe some of us can find genuine love and meaning together. Maybe.

If something in you aches for meaning, I hope you’ll walk this path with me. We won’t change the world — certainly not in the short term — but we can change the worlds inside us. And maybe we can change the lives of those we touch.