"It's Not About You"

It's graduation season. Congratulations to all the graduates out there! David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, offers what he thinks should be the message to new graduates in this article: It's Not About You.

His closing paragraph really hits home: Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly. Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.

Sounds remarkably like the Gospel instruction: "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." - Matthew 16:25