At the beginning of this year, I set one large journalistic goal for myself. Sure, I wanted to win a Best of SNO award. And of course I wanted everyone to read what I had wrote. But all of that came second to my main goal: “Relationships, Relationships, Relationships!” That is to say, I wanted to build relationships on staff. Not the kind of relationships I try to build on Couples Caleb. I wanted everyone to know each other. To trust each other. To feel comfortable asking questions without fear of ridicule.
Over the course of the year, I’ve had the news staff play with toothpaste, pipe cleaners, balloons and oranges, just to name a few. I spent money on materials and I came up with (or, more often, borrowed from Sarah Nichols) concepts for games for our staff. Admittedly, some games failed in varying capacities. The oranges were too big, and the moral of the toothpaste game was pretty corny. The failures, though, brought us even closer together as we all laughed at my mistakes. The games made our staff better, more interconnected and (to use a corporate cliché) more like a family.
Furthermore, I could not have accomplished anything I did this year on my own. Couples Caleb began as a byproduct of my friendship with Mason last year. All of my stories became better through my editors before publication. And everything we did this year, whether it appeared on the site or happened behind the scenes of the newsroom, was made possible by the approval of Mrs. Basinger.
This idea, relationships always and everywhere, applies to life outside of the news room. After having read The Stranger, I believe that life on Earth has little innate meaning. To be clear, my personal belief is that life’s only innate meaning is to glorify God, whom I believe to be the Creator and Savior of the world. But that, at the end of the day, relates more to life after we die than life before it. If the only purpose of life on Earth is to prepare for life after it, than that makes it more or less meaningless. That leaves it up to us to make meaning out of it. That’s why we find goodbyes so hard, why we build bureaucratic societies with numerous laws and rules and prisons, why we make homes with children who love, who fight, who leave to pursue higher education. Humanity has chosen the meaning of our collective life as a species, and it is the same as that little goal I made for myself last July: “Relationships, Relationships, Relationships!”
Oh, and Paul? If you’re reading this, I miss you.
