Rebuilding Our LIves On The Triad Of Fulfillment

​I am going to deeply miss our outgoing Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy.

No Surgeon General in the history of our country has done more to promote mental health wellness; no Surgeon general has done more to help us as a country come to understand that our mental and physical health are not even remotely different things.

In a closing letter, Murthy revealed that he spent the better part of his two terms trying to answer the question: "What are the deeper root causes of the pain and unhappiness I encounter so often across our country"? He went on to say that, "answering that question is urgent because the status quo is harming our physical and mental health, robbing us of our optimism, and contributing to division and polarization."

And the answer that Murthy came up with? He said, "After years of reflecting on the stories I have heard, delving into scientific data, and convening researchers, I have come to see there are three essential elements that fuel our fulfillment and well-being: relationships, service, and purpose.

I spent 4 hours talking to school counselors in Chesapeake yesterday about how best to support students who are coming to school with mental health challenges. Which, really, is almost all of our students to some degree these days. And the one thing I came away with, the one thing I ALWAYS come away with, is the importance our students place, the craving they have, for relationships.

A student coming to school with challenges almost always finds the less challenging path inside a relationship with someone at the school. Someone who sees value and purpose in them. Someone who often inspires in the student a desire to serve others and their community in beautiful ways they never would have discovered on their own.

And it was also not lost on me driving home, listening to Murthy talk about his prescription for the "pain and unhappiness" he so often encounters, that in the midst of sharing time with those counselors yesterday, in the midst of living out a purpose that is deeply fulfilling to me, in the midst of serving others in a way I find meaningful and they seem to as well, this man, me, who battles his fair share of bouts with pain and unhappiness, felt entirely happy.

I would not have traded that time yesterday for money or fame or power, the triad Murthy feels too many are pursuing with a false belief they will be the cure for their pain.

On his way out, Murthy suggests we have a choice. We can choose "the status quo marked by pain, disconnection and division, or a different path of health, happiness, and fulfillment. Choosing the latter will require rethinking what defines success and a good life. It will require building our lives around the time-tested triad of fulfillment, grounded in relationships, service, and purpose."

What I love most about Murthy's preferred choice is that it's not a choice we have to wait on the country to make, or even our neighbors or friends to make, it's one we can make each day.

The choice to connect with friends and family in a deeper and more consistent way. The choice to identify the work or activities in life that fulfill us and lean into those activities, even if they don't make us rich or famous or powerful. And the choice to serve our neighborhoods and our communities in ways that make our being there value added.

A lot of doctors throughout the ages have been credited with medical breakthroughs upon discovering various medicines and vaccinations and surgeries. Many of them indeed quite important.

But maybe this nation's doctor has discovered the biggest breakthrough of them all. That the healthiest prescription we can all write for our lives is to return to the understanding we all evolved from. The understanding that our lives are absolutely dependent on our interconnectedness, on our service with and for one another, and it's in that understanding where we will find our truest happiness and fulfillment.

Thank you for your service Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. It has truly impacted my life and so many of the lives I get to connect with. You were brave enough to call loneliness one of the greatest health risks of our times. I hope we will all be brave enough to connect with one another in ways that will eradicate that risk in the times to come.