How We Begin Again
In Part 1, I endeavored to name the tension: we live in an age of endless freedom and choice—and yet, many feel lost. In Part 2, we pinpointed the Disconnect: how the journey from inherited identity to self-constructed meaning has left us with more autonomy, but less coherence
Now we ask: how do we begin again?
Not by reverting to the past, but by remembering what was good. Not by discarding progress, but by anchoring it in something deeper. If we’re to move forward, we need more than reinvention—we need re-rooting and, simply said, reconnecting.
The ache we feel isn’t a flaw. It’s a signal and a symptom. It reminds us that we were made for something more than survival, self-definition, or striving towards constant performance. We long for identity that isn’t fragile. Belonging that isn’t earned. Meaning that doesn’t shift with every algorithm, opinion, comment, or circumstance.
We need a story—a framework—big enough to hold both our freedom and our limits: love and freedom within boundaries1.
We need language that reclaims the four questions:
Why are we here? Because we were created with intention, for relationship and purpose—not by accident.
Who are we? Beings made in the image of something Greater, a loving Creator—not random organisms and data points.
What are we for? To live, love, build, restore, connect—not just consume or react.
How should we live? Rooted in relationship, humility, and responsibility—not isolation or self-promotion.
This is invitational, not seeking conformity or uniformity. It’s about recovering a shared framework—a way to be human together.
It could be as simple as gathering a few people around a table. Hosting conversations that make space for honest reflection. Asking the four questions—not to debate, but to understand. Listening across resonant truths and forced ideologies, all the while seeking belonging and purpose, without condemnation, but with repentance and embrace.
It could look like starting small circles—at homes, cafés, community centers—where people bring their own stories and explore these questions together. It’s in this context that trust can grow and fragmented lives can begin to reconnect.
We don’t need perfect answers. But we do need the courage to ask better questions—together.
So How Do We Re-discover Our Past, Present, and Future?
It could be as simple as gathering a few people around a table. Hosting conversations that make space for honest reflection. Asking the four questions—not to debate, but to understand. Listening across resonant truths and forced ideologies, all the while seeking belonging and purpose, without condemnation, but with repentance and embrace.
It could look like starting small circles—at homes, cafés, community centers—where people bring their own stories and explore these questions together. It’s in this context that trust can grow and fragmented lives can begin to reconnect.
We don’t need perfect answers. But we do need the courage to ask better questions—together.
To remember forward is to re-inherit. To look back—not with blind loyalty or traditionalism, but with transformation and renewal, with discernment—and choose to carry forward what’s worth keeping. It’s to reclaim what fragmentation has stolen: trust, story, connection, belonging.
We are not starting from scratch. We are continuing a human story that stretches far behind and—if we’re wise—far ahead of us. Years ago, as I embarked on this journey, the questions did not lead me to self-define, but I found myself invited by a carpenter rabbi who lived two millennia ago, whose words still resonate in me: “I am the vine and you are the branches.”
So let me invite you to recover what anchors us and to reimagine what we can become—individuals, communities, and generations who know who we are, because our Creator told us to call him by his Name: I AM. So if He is, let us also be as we were meant to be at all times: created, loved, redeemed, and alive.
Let’s look up, down, and around. There is more of everything with Him.
(1) The Creative Gift by H.R.R. Rookmaaker.
