One of the hardest parts of teaching is when students only want to focus on “what is on the test.” When they don’t want to think broadly or wrestle with questions. They just want the answers.

I was catching up with old business school classmates in Palo Alto last week. Among the career updates, one friend shared something that stopped me cold. He and his wife were giving up everything they owned. House, cars, furniture, everything. They were reducing their lives to two suitcases each and setting off to travel the world.

We all have “one thing” we convince ourselves will make our lives whole. It might be a car, a house, a career, or even a relationship. Sometimes it’s our health or our sense of achievement. We tell ourselves that if this one piece fell into place, then everything else would finally make sense. But here’s the problem: when we elevate any good thing into the ultimate thing, it begins to define us. What we thought would set us free can actually enslave us.

There’s a strange yet compelling paradox in this quote from Lewis. In it, he introduces the tension between pain and presence. We spend so much time trying to avoid discomfort, yet time and again it becomes the place where our illusions fall away and something more honest, more human, more real begins to emerge. Not despite our wounds, but through them.