As we leave the old year behind and make our way into the uncertainty and the promise of the new, there’s much to ponder. A book I recently read has given a direction to my musings. The Kingdom of the Poor, a memoir by Charles Strobel, a Nashville priest, tells of his being born into poverty and choosing to focus his life and ministry on assisting unhoused persons. This simply written book wouldn’t win a Pulitzer prize but it won my heart with his stories of people who touched his life, financially poor ones who knew little of the everyday privileges I take for granted. Most of all, it was a quote by Mark Twain that Strobel used to tell his story that caught my attention: “The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”
It’s the “why” that is leading me through my own story to consider what I’ll focus on in 2026. As I do so, I wonder if any of us fully know the “why” of our life. It seems that this “why” involves a continual revelation, like a ball of yarn starting small with more and more strings winding around it. In my early forties, working in rural parishes with adult education, I said to a friend, “I like what I’m doing, but I know it’s not what I’m meant to do.” Ten years later as a published writer leading retreats around the world, I thought I finally I knew the “why.” But in my sixties, I discovered a fuller “why”— a graced revelation moved me to focus on being a compassionate presence. Now in my early eighties I believe this is “it.” But is it? Is there more string to be added to that ball of yarn?
What about you—the story of your journey into the central reason for your life? This is not the time to make comparisons with others, to judge your “why” by what they’ve been and done. I recall a friend never fully satisfied with his “why,” always wanting (in his words) “to have done a noble deed.” What he did not realize is how much his non-judgmental presence allowed people with whom he traveled on the subway, taught in classes, and met regularly for coffee and conversation, to benefit from his kindness and to appreciate themselves.
Our “why” has value. It strengthens our refusal to allow discouragement to reign over our thoughts and emotions. In our current political and social disruption with its chaotic atmosphere we can quickly judge our “why” to be of small value. But, as Rebecca Solnit points out in No Straight Road Takes You There, “…despair is all around us, telling us the problems are insoluble, we are not strong enough, our efforts are in vain, no one really cares, and human nature is fundamentally corrupt.” Let’s not give in to that despair.
“Stories do more than reveal; they stir something deeper,” writes Jill Tiefenthaler of National Geographic. I encourage you to spend some time perusing the story of YOUR life, to allow this to “stir something deeper” in you, to marvel at who you are, the value of your “why,” how it has evolved and moved you toward your reason for being. May you see yourself as a person expressing your goodness by loving and being loved with your unique personality and your ever-evolving strings on the ball of life.
As the door of the new year opens, let us view our “why” and trust it to anchor us like a north star guiding travelers to a valued destination.
Abundant peace for you in 2026,
Joyce Rupp
