The Search: Finding the Meaning of Life | The Augustine Institute (Episode 1)

[Music] [Music] life is totally amazing you are on the ultimate journey right now it's called your life you know from the moment you crash land into this planet we're searching for something we're searching for meaning for answers for love we want to know what this is all about you know something we too often take for granted just getting to be here to breathe right now to experience i mean we look at those mountain top experiences in life like that's what it's all about you know riding that wave falling in love but just getting to be is riding the ultimate wave [Music] every breath we take just experiencing the air all around us right now it's really kind of mind-blowing but i tell you it is a journey you're going somewhere you ever stop to think you know where am i going where is this journey taking me what's all this about what am i looking for from this life so often we forget we forget to search for answers to those questions that we need to actually be happy to search for the ultimate answers to those fundamental questions about the meaning of life about who you are about what happens when you die about what really makes life meaningful that's what the search is all about see that deepest longing of our hearts for something more for something better for a life that's amazing that longing has an answer [Music] so what do you seek you are going to die what a horrible way to start this whole thing you can't avoid that no one gets out alive and if you ever walk through a cemetery you see these rows and rows of tombstones [Music] everybody who ever lived has that in common you know no matter how important that person was everybody ends up six feet under with a slab of grain on top of them and each of those pieces of granite each of those tombstones has a start date and an end date we all have a start date and we all have a finite ending and that's a sobering thing to remember i mean you have a certain number of breaths that you get to breathe you just used about two of them and then you're out right but the part we often overlook it's really the most important part of that tombstone it's that little thing between those two dates the dash that's your life [Music] you're in your dash right now so what do you want from your life what are you looking for from that dash what's all this about [Music] more and more people i think live their entire lives just distracted by passing things and never even pause to ask that question what is this all about what do i want out of life what am i looking for [Music] maybe it's power you want to be the boss you don't want to spend your life working for other people's dreams you want other people to work for yours maybe it's money man a lot of people think that if they have money then they'll be happy if you have a nice mansion if you have the right car if you have enough zeros in your bank account maybe it's to be really fit you know if you want some sense of personal achievement what easier better clearer way to get that than chiseling your body or maybe it's that next adrenaline rush you want to feel alive or maybe you want pleasure that'll get you what you're really looking for right or maybe you just want to make a difference you want your accomplishments to be noticed because that'll be the sign that you really matter am i getting close have i left something out we're all looking for something not that there's anything wrong with money or skydiving not there's anything wrong with more noble dreams like i want to provide for a good family you know getting all that stuff that's fine but i got to tell you underneath all those other things we look for in life there's a more fundamental longing you and me and everybody who ever lived what if we're all kind of looking for the same thing we all have basically the same stuff between our ears basically the same spirit right we're part of the same species we're all looking for that for that something human beings all of us we want to be happy and i got to tell you if you want money it's because you think it'll make you happy if you want to make an impact on the world it's because you think it'll make you happy if you want a good marriage it's because you think that marriage will give you the happiness and that sense of purpose and meaning fulfillment that you've always been looking for i mean aristotle talked about happiness as the end of every action is the thing that we're made for the dalai lama said that we seven billion human beings emotionally mentally physically we're all the same everyone wants a joyful life blaise pascal had a profound reflection on happiness he said all men seek happiness this is without exception whatever different means they employ they all tend to this end the cause of some going to war and others avoiding it it's the same desire in both attended to with different views this is the motive of every action of every man even those who hang themselves [Music] we all want to be happy there was a harvard study done over the course of 80 years this is an unprecedented study of hundreds of people and it wanted to gauge how they turned out in life and what made them healthy and successful in life and the headline that summed up the study said that good genes are nice but joy is better and they actually found that the person's sense of happiness and contentedness at the age of 50 was a better predictor than cholesterol for how healthy and happy they'd be when they were 80. happiness we're all looking for it actually even makes you healthier so where are you going to find it where are you looking to get your happiness guess what would taste good right now to everyone in the car candy hey just look around the whole world is promising you happiness everywhere you look get the item that adds to your personal comfort if you buy this if you do that if you hit this goal then then you'll be happy notice how your neighbors look with admiration as you drive out take the keys and see what driving pleasure really is so take my word for it it satisfies so we're all looking for happiness but you know the problem is what is it you know so often we we dream too small and we confuse passing pleasures with that fundamental happiness that we're made for i mean really how much happiness do you want how long do you want to be happy for a couple minutes a day a year i mean ask your heart how much happiness does it want if you pick up any psychology textbook in it you're going to find the social sciences have been studying this for a long time my name is jim owens i'm a counselor working in private practice i've spent most of my professional time counseling working with people in addictions i think we all have to recognize that we have appetites in this life and some of those appetites we get met pretty easily we're hungry we eat we're satisfied we're thirsty we drink we're satisfied we want to achieve something we accomplish something and now we're satisfied but we also have this sense that all the eating and the drinking and the productivity in the world might not satisfy us completely we're hungry for something we have an appetite for something in our very core of our being that just nothing on this world can satisfy you know we all know what it's like to have a great meal or have a great conversation and those things feel good but of course the experience fades away how many medals do we have to collect how many trophies do we have to collect how many meals do we have to collect where we then feel full somehow and we hunger for that experience to last to persist to really if we could have it our way to go on for eternity i mean if we really want to get serious with this question i think we have to ask ourselves if you could be happy forever would you turn that down in the depths of our souls there's a growling there's this gaping sense that there's something more i'm looking for to fill it and i'll tell you you could fill your soul with everything this world could possibly give you and it's still looking for something more that makes no sense at all unless there's something more out there to fill it or you know what that would be the cruelest joke ever the cruelest joke the universe has ever played on us if you had that longing and there was no final answer to it when we don't direct that longing when we don't stop and ask what do you seek to your own heart what's it made for what's it made to be filled by we can end up destroying our lives i mean how many people destroyed their lives because they're restless this woman didn't satisfy me i'm moving on to the next one and the next one and the next one and i leave a trail of broken families behind me this drug didn't satisfy me i'll try the next one this amount of money isn't doing it for me so i'll do this that or the other dishonest thing to get whatever it takes to fill this heart and it's still not enough in the united states 20 to 25 of us are walking around every day suffering inside a mental illness typically anxiety or depression it's 18 of us almost one out of five who have pervasive level of anxiety that we live with every day on the outside it looks like we're a really happy society but inside i think you'll be surprised to see that people are very deeply struggling you have people with beautiful mansions and fancy cars and full bank accounts who are suffering struggling with this very difficult question of why do i have all these things and then i'm still not happy you know we live in a world where the pace is so frantic that you literally can go for weeks months sometimes years at a time without ever stopping to even think about am i happy am i really fulfilled and life just becomes this endless meaningless pursuit of trying to get ahead and trying to get the next thing and trying to stay on top of all of you know the the spinning plates that i've got going on in my life i'll be happy when i get the degree when i get the wife when i get the career when i get the accolades i'll be happy when this starts to get related to a concept we have in psychology called destination addiction and we're so bad at putting off happiness we think we're going to get it someday when we get this one thing in our life that we don't currently have maybe the first mission in life as an adult is to find the meaning and purpose in your life because you will not find happiness unless you know what the meaning and purpose of your life is you've got to know why you're here what you're made for and what you're supposed to be doing with your life [Music] in the nba's great pool of talent no trait is more respected than hustle it's a burning desire to be first at everything and exceed one's own limitations hustle can even compensate for a height disadvantage or a lack of quickness by giving 110 percent on every play hustle has made bill henslick the best he can be i was just the wisconsin farm boy there were a lot of great players i had to figure out a way where i could play i became a defensive player johnson can't connect foul on magic johnson i wanted to play i wanted to be on that court i was fortunate enough to have a chance to try out for the 80 olympic team and i was one of the last players to make it because of that my draft prospect vaulted from maybe being a third or fourth round pick to the first round by the seattle supersonics when i got done playing as a player after three back operations denver started searching for a head coach i got a call well to me this is a special head coaching job because i want to be here i like colorado and and i feel i'm ready i'm ready and i'm excited so without further ado i'll just answer some questions and we can get to work as the season starts off we're all set to move forward knowing that this year i was gonna coach the first year was going to be extremely difficult we weren't going to win a lot of games our best player we one free agent we signed tears his acl he's done for the season we had other players that got hurt it got even worse i was playing sometimes five rookies you don't win in the nba with five rookies we start off the season i think we go 0 and 10. one stretch we lost 23 straight it looked like we may have the worst record ever in the nba this is brutal it was so tough on my family on me uh the media pounding on you that was the toughest point toughest year of my life i'm praying to god every day god what is your plan for me [Music] i was fired i was called into gm's office i walk out with a box just a box of my stuff i'm thinking what am i going to do now my life had been about basketball i loved the sport and then that rug got pulled out from underneath me god had a different plan i started a foundation with my best friend and our mission is about preparing kids for the game of life 1998 we started our complex it's 14 acres by 03 everything had culminated into opening our gold crown field house we took it from an organization that we were serving maybe 150 300 kids to suddenly now today almost 18 000 kids we serve you know oftentimes in life you look back and what if i got another contract extension what if i made more money what if i had won a championship all those things yeah that would have been really cool but would it have fulfilled me at that time i thought well yeah maybe that would have fulfilled me but now doing what i'm doing it's been incredible the reason why you're here is to search for that meaning when you can search for that meaning that meaning in your life that's when you're going to find true happiness [Music] everybody arrives at a place in life at one point or another where they come face to face with that big question what's the point of it all is there a point of it all maybe at that at that point in time you look at religion and think i've been there done that's got nothing for me maybe because his religion's been been presented to you in a way that just turns you off the fastest growing religious group in the western world is the nuns people who don't identify with any particular religion in the united states nuns recently surpassed roman catholics and the younger you get the more and more people you see identifying as nuns you know what else we're finding more and more people are unhappy among generation z they're arguably according to all studies the most anxious most depressed most despairing generation in history where so many people are just trying to find a sense of purpose and meaning to life and and they're coming up empty [Applause] there could be all sorts of valid reasons that people are looking at religion and saying that's got nothing for me and i decide to look for happiness in all sorts of other places but i'll tell you it's not working what if we're thrown away religion because of what we think it is or how it's been presented to us in the wrong way rather than what's really there and what if in the process we're just throwing away the answer to every question of the human heart it seems like we're we're just overlooking the answer right in the palm of our hands it's been there all along [Music] you know everywhere you look people are throwing answers to you answers to those fundamental questions or your longing heart you find self-help programs everywhere guys this journey this is not self-help you know one of the ways that self-help programs come up short is that they tell you to be happy but not why we're going to address the fundamental answers to those fundamental questions about the meaning of life why you should be hopeful where are you going to find the love that you're made for guys this is going to help you in a way that you could never help yourself [Music] jesus's first words to humanity in the gospel of john kind of striking he turned to two people who were following him and he said what do you seek what are you looking for he knew the answer i want happiness i want joy in the depths of our souls there's a growling there's this gaping sense that there's something more i'm looking for to fill it what is all this about not just christianity not just the church what is human existence all about we need firm answers to those questions good answers to those questions to live a good life a life of meaning we need those answers for happiness it's time to invite the world right now to get back to a search that makes life amazing every dream you've ever had for an amazing life every hope you've ever had for happiness every longing for that love that would fill your soul it's got an answer don't be one of those people who goes through life never even asking the question never taken a step never taken the journey don't go through life just existing the journey starts today right now so what do you seek [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] you

Channel: Augustine Institute

Views: 31,938

Keywords: Chris Stefanick, catholic church, the search, catholic, catholic alpha, alpha, first evangelization

Id: c0kl7LV84ro

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021