https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=AYNzafKkLpU
You talk about how dangerous it is to tell some young person whose life is messed up that they’re just great the way they are with which I completely agree. But how do you reach a young person who’s bought into the notion that life is meaningless? Well, the first thing is you tell them why they think that. It’s like they’ve got all sorts of reasons to think that it’s like life is hard. It’s it’s it’s a crucifixion. That’s right. And so it’s no wonder they think that it’s like, OK, fine. First of all, we’re going to take it seriously. Yeah, you’re suffering and adrift and you have your reasons. But and so you take those reasons seriously and you say, despite that, despite that, there’s more to you than you think. And you know that, too, because you upgrade yourself for not manifesting it. And you say to people, well, I ask people, for example, who do you admire? Because that’s that instinct for admiration is part of the instinct for imitation. It’s like, who do you admire? You admire people who are completely irresponsible. You admire people who can’t take care of themselves. They can’t even take care of themselves. Here’s the most admirable person, completely useless to themselves, maybe even counterproductive. Just a bloody catastrophe for their family. And like, what would you call a social danger? Like, no one admires that. No one admires that. It’s like you start minimally. Can you take care of yourself? At least that. That’d be the first thing. And then is there more now? Is there enough to you so that maybe someone else could rely on you now and then? And maybe maybe a number of people, maybe your family. It could be a it could be the glue that holds them together and and and mends them. And then maybe there could be more to you than that. Maybe you could be someone for your community. And God only knows how far you could go with that. Those are the people you admire. It’s like, well, try that out. See what happens. Start locally. Jung, Carl Jung said this is one of my favorite Carl Jung quotes. The modern man does not see God because he will not look low enough. I really like that. And so, you know, I’ve been telling the people that I talk to the same thing. It’s like you have a certain amount of. Potential within your grasp. You may find what you have contemptible because you’re not in a position of power. This modicum of possibility that’s been granted to you is beneath you. And so you do nothing with it. And so you get nothing from it. You take that seriously. You do the small things you can, the humble things that you can to put yourself together in those tiny, embarrassing ways that are real. And if you do that enough, you’ll you’ll fortify yourself and that will work. And, you know, one of the things that’s been unbelievably hardening to me. It’s ridiculous, really. Like. Normally now, if I go out during the day, if I go to any city, I’ve been to like 150 cities in the last year. And if I’m walking around on the street or in an airport, someone will come up to me about every 10 minutes or so. And they’ll say the same thing. They always say the same thing. They first of all apologize for bothering me. And they’re very polite. So all my interactions with people, you’d never guess this from, like my reputation in the press, but all my interactions with people in public are unbelievably positive. And people will come up and say, you know, I was in this small domain of hell a year ago or six months ago, whatever it is, addiction, alcoholism. I wasn’t getting along with my family. I’d been living with my girlfriend for five years and we were stuck. I didn’t have any direction for my career. I was nihilistic. You know, I was whatever, you know, although different ways that people can fall into a pit and and and and be miserable. Said I read your books or I watched your lectures and I decided I was going to I was going to try to put my family together. Or I was going to I was going to make a vision and pursue it. Or I was going to try telling the truth. I was just going to try one of these things. And things are way better, way better. You know, and sometimes it’s a father and a son or sometimes it’s a son and a daughter. It’s usually it’s usually it’s not often a daughter and a mother, not so much. But I mean, if it’s a pair of people, but or it’s a girlfriend and a boyfriend and the girlfriend’s very happy usually because her boyfriend has straightened up substantially and maybe they’re getting married and like he’s half civilized at this point. But but but it’s but it’s it’s it’s an unbelievably positive thing to see. And and it’s a real thing. You know, it’s like it’s so interesting to watch the fact that all people have to do is put some of these things into practice. And all of a sudden that little modicum of potential that they had because they got humble enough to deal with it properly starts to expand and expand. Like I believe and I do believe this. And I think this is part of the Christian message fundamental. Is that there’s actually no limit to that expansion, you know, because in some sense, like we are this weird combination of finite and infinite. Like we’re related to the infinite in some manner, obviously, because the infinite exists and here we are. And so we’re related to it in some manner. And I don’t know what manner that is, but I don’t know what the limits are. It’s like if you were the best person you could be, you know, truly, if you decided to live by truth and to aim at the good and you really did that, you put your whole heart and soul into it like you were like that’s what you were staking your life on, because you’re staking your life on something. Who the hell could you be? And no one knows, you know, you know perfectly well, you could be far more than you are. And you don’t know what the upper limit of that is. And we certainly don’t know what the upper limit would be if there were lots of people doing that. God only knows what problems we could solve. You know, there’s lots of suffering and misery in the world, plenty. And it’s no wonder that people get bitter. But God, as you pointed out before, you know, we’ve got no shortage of ingenuity and possibility. And if we were serious about making things less wretched than they are, who knows what miracles we could pull off.