Jake Weidokal

This morning I was assembling a Minnie Mouse puzzle with my daughter and all was going well, until we got to the end and realized we were missing Minnie’s phone. “Let’s find phone!” my two year old shouted. And off she went, scouring the house for a little purple phone.

I laughed when I saw the first place she looked.

She walked over beside our couch, lifted up an air vent cover, and peeked inside. “Phoooooone?”, she yelled down into the vent.

It was nearly impossible for the phone to be in the vent, because it’s too big to fit through the vent cover. But she was determined to find it there. When I told my wife about this, she said she’d shown our daughter how to check the air vents a few days earlier after we had guests.

She learned a search pattern, checking vents, but applied it where it didn’t belong. We can make the same mistake with the “universal aims”: Love. Belonging. Purpose. Joy. Peace.

We look for love in hookup culture, romance novels, and AI companions.
We look for belonging in anonymous forums, likes on our posts, and parasocial fandoms.
We look for purpose in status games, promotions, and hustle.
We look for joy in binging TV, retail therapy, and quick dopamine hits.
We look for peace in riches, wellness fads, and week-long vacations.

Do any of these resonate with you? I know some do for me. Some of these methods you may think will actually lead to the aim. For example, maybe you think wellness will bring you peace. I don’t think that’s quite right. Focusing on wellness will significantly improve your quality of life, especially if you haven’t focused on it before. But I’m convinced it will not bring you true and lasting peace. The key words are “true and lasting”.

I’m sure that if we could flip a switch and become omniscient, seeing ourselves looking in these places would be just as absurd as my daughter looking down into the air vent and shouting for her toy phone.

Now, my list above assumes that everybody is aiming at these universal aims. While this does happen on a subconscious level, many, maybe most, people get their methods confused with their aims. They think their aim is riches, or hustle, or hookups, or time to sit and read their romance novels. This is a tragic misunderstanding. And it’s a prime reason many people are so dissatisfied and utterly confused about it. They thought riches were what they needed, so they attained it, but something still feels wrong. They feel discontent, empty. This is because what they were really searching for was peace, and riches wasn’t the way to attain that in the first place. Instead, they probably assume something is wrong with them internally because everyone else seems to be made happy by their riches, especially scrolling through Instagram. So they medicate to numb the pain and make themselves look as happy as they can on their social media, feeding the algorithmic illusion for others. Maybe this sounds familiar?

The key to breaking this cycle is to stop and consider your aims. Ask the questions: Why are we here? Why am I here? What are the highest aims that surface in great literature across time? Why do these highest aims keep surfacing? Where do they come from? What are they?

I don’t have perfect answers to these questions, but they are deep questions that have been helpful for me to consider in formulating my aims.

Once you have your aims figured out, then it’s worth considering where to search.

You’ve already been searching, so take some time to consider where you spend most of your time. Do a minute-by-minute audit of your days. Where you spend your time is where you’re searching. Again, it’s important to look back at literature across time to find the correct ways to search. If you look to your friends or present day examples, they will be searching in the ways I listed out above. But the true aims, and the methods of moving toward them, surface in literature across time, because they’re true, and truth is eternal. For me, the Bible is the clearest source. But the Bible is not the only place truth can be found. Truth is powerful and makes its way into human expression across time. For example, I can learn from the Bible that riches are not peace, but I can also see this theme in A Christmas Carol or Great Expectations.

“Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income”
Ecclesiastes 5:10

The author of Ecclesiastes highlights the unsatisfiable nature of greed.

“There was a time, when you were another man. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you.”
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Dickens shows that the pursuit of riches can become all consuming and change who you are.

“He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald points out that a false search can take us right past our true aim.

So test your aims and your methods against the cautionary tales that have stood the test of time. Look for truth, and ask: Are you looking in the right places?