It is People, Not Things, That Make Life Worthwhile

03 Jan It is People, Not Things, That Make Life Worthwhile

When you strip everything away, life really comes down to this: knowing we are not alone, knowing somebody cares, knowing we are loved.

Early in his administration, President Ronald Reagan came out of the Hilton hotel where he had just spoken and was walking a short distance to his car when he heard a noise—pop, pop, pop—like firecrackers going off. His Secret Service bodyguard shoved him into the nearby presidential limousine and jumped in on top of him. Reagan felt a crushing pain in his ribs and thought that his bodyguard had broken a rib when he jumped on top of him. Only later did he learn that the pain was from a gunshot wound.

He began coughing up blood, and they rushed him to George Washington Hospital. He was walking to the emergency room when he got lightheaded and weak in the knees. He was also having great difficulty breathing. The next thing he knew he was lying face up on a gurney, being wheeled into the hospital. Later as he was going into the operating room, he looked at the surgical team and quipped, “I sure hope you’re all Republicans.”

Before he went into the operating room, however, while he was still in the emergency room, Reagan’s difficulty with breathing increased. His lungs were working, but no matter how many times he took a breath, he couldn’t get enough air, even though the E.R. staff had an oxygen tube down his throat. He began to panic and finally blacked out.

When President Reagan regained consciousness some time later he felt someone, evidently one of the nurses, holding his hand. He later wrote, “It is difficult for me to describe how deeply touched I was by that gesture. It was very reassuring just to feel the warmth of a human hand.”

He was still not fully conscious and could not see who was holding his hand, giving him such a surge of encouragement. “Who’s holding my hand?” he asked. There was no answer. “Who’s holding my hand?” he asked again. Again, no answer. “Does Nancy know about us?”1

For the most powerful man on earth, the most important thing to him at that desperate moment was to feel the warmth of a caring hand.

“We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence and its only end.” So said Benjamin Disraeli, former prime minister of England.

This is one of the most insightful statements about life I have ever read. In two sentences, it captures the essence of what Jesus said in John 15:12, “This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”

Relationships are so important because God created us in His image, to need one another, to have meaningful relationships, and unless we have them, life becomes very unsatisfying.

Harold Kushner, in his book When All You Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, wrote:

I was sitting on a beach one summer day, watching two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. They were hard at work, building an elaborate sand castle by the water’s edge, with gates and towers and moats and internal passages. Just when they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of wet sand. I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what had happened to all their hard work. But they surprised me. Instead, they ran up the shore away from the water, laughing and holding hands, and sat down to build another castle. I realized that they had taught me an important lesson. All the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating are built on sand. Only our relationships to other people endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody’s hand to hold will be able to laugh.2

God has created us to live in harmony and unity with other humans, and unless we have meaningful relationships, life becomes hard for us.

Billy Graham often said that the number-one most popular sermon he preached was on loneliness. In our look-out-for-number-one culture, we have gotten what we looked out for: ourselves. And we find that we are not enough. We feel alienated, isolated, lonely.

Our culture is highly mobile, self-centered, and pleasure-driven. As a result, we may never get rooted; we may never get a sense of belonging. We may never rid ourselves of loneliness. Why? Because it is not the self-centered accumulation of things, but rather, people are what make life worth living.

As we begin the New Year, it can be a game-changer to determine that we will prioritize meaningful relationships. We can begin looking out for what we really want and need: others. Life is only meaningful if we live it with and for others.

1. Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Pocket Books, 1990), 262.
2. Harold Kushner, When All You Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough (New York: Pocket Books, 1986), 166.

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