People Watching explores what it looks like to be a flourishing human through the relationships that shape us. I share conversations from real folks about the role models they’ve found in their everyday lives, and “character references” from historical, fictional, and contemporary folks who shed light on what it looks like to live with purpose in any age.
C.S. Lewis concluded his 1944 essay “Is Theology Poetry?” with the statement, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
Lewis found in the Christian faith answers that made sense of his questions, longings, and choices. He discovered the purpose of his life. Within that purpose, he found a way to bring together all of his experiences, training, and skill into a single focus: to make Christianity legible to others in a moment where so much of life felt illegible and pointless.
Lewis saw all of life by the light of this purpose, using it to illuminate his destination, sharpen his vision, and pursue a hoped-for future.
Purpose is the paradigm, the lens, the frame. It’s not a buzz word, a hashtag, or performance. It’s the animating force, the unmistakable call, the compelling invitation that moves us to take our next steps in a specific direction, toward an imagined future.
It’s the path to the life we long for—the life that no machine, however sophisticated, can live for us.
In the face of calls for greater efficiency, faster speed, expanding scale, and optimized productivity, purpose calls us back to what makes us human: our capacity to reflect, to choose, to integrate our past and future in conscious, loving action in the present.
What’s your purpose?
Let’s be hopeful, creative, and wise—together.
Shalom,
