Jake Roque's video: My search for meaning a video essay on pursuing a fulfilling life

Hi, I'm Jake. I'm turning a page and working on some new things to share with you online. It's very exciting, and a bit frightening. I hope the words and ideas I share in this video and the ones to come bring you joy, meaning and more fulfillment in life, and that they help you reduce the suffering you might experience or see others around you experience. See you in the next one. If you enjoyed this video, please drop a like so others will see it, and subscribe for more like it. Thanks :) Find me online @jakeroque My search for meaning // a video essay on pursuing a fulfilling life Transcription Hi, I’m Jake. I’ve been away for a while. It’s been a few years now since I’ve been posting on YouTube, and a lot has changed since then. I’ve found some new passions. I work part time as a personal trainer and I’m also completing a master’s degree in psychology. I have my very own, very small apartment in Los Angeles, California, and I’ve been reading and writing tons. I’ve been working hard to investigate and decipher the answers to the most important questions I can find. Questions like, what exactly constitutes a meaningful life? What are the ideals worth running towards, and the horrors worth running from? What makes a person feel fulfilled and that their life has purpose? And precisely how does one implement the journey towards such things? My life has looked really different in this past year. Most of ours have of course. I’ve lived in a more simple and minimalistic way, and with that has come a deeper sense of meaning than any time I can remember. I’ve found renewed beauty in simple things. In nature and the wonders of our planet, in the cosmos, in intellectual exploration, in the people around me, and in life as a whole. This has come to be over the past year of emerging from a darker season of life. Much of the period from late 2018 through early 2020, I struggled with formidable waves of depression and anxiety. There were many bright moments, and it certainly wasn’t all doom and gloom, but it also it also consisted of much too little meaningful living. It’s not exactly that this struggle is entirely over now, as I don’t think it ever really is for anyone, but more that I have an improved understanding of what to set against the harsher elements of life when they do come. And they will always come. I’ve become well acquainted with the darkness one can experience in life. In part through the effects that tragedy, malevolence and departure from the truth have had on myself and the lives of people I love, and also through purposeful investigation of some of the greatest, and some of the most horrifying literature written by mankind. I’ve come to understand that there are manifestations of hell in this life that go well beyond most any person’s wildest imagination. The suffering that is inherent in this world, tainted by the active participation of those who purposefully make things worse can lead to a darkness that is almost incomprehensible. And we are all capable of paving the way there for ourselves and the people we love. But I have also learned that the good in life, the good in people, the resilience and nobility that arises from those who choose the heroic path precisely when it appears most daunting, who choose to love their friends as well as their enemies, who work to restore peace and balance where it is necessary, and who choose to be grateful in spite of their suffering. That light that emerges is greater still. And I have faith that it will triumph over the dark in the end, even if the path there isn’t always pretty. As I’ve been stumbling ever slowly toward that light, I’ve begun paying precise attention to what I’m orienting myself towards in life. For thousands of years us humans have asked ourselves these questions. “why don’t we do the things we wish we did? And why do we do things that we hate?” We lie in bed at night staring at the ceiling, and think of the ways we’ve abandoned truth, abandoned love, abandoned kindness and empathy, or reason and wisdom. Many of us ruminate on the ways we’ve fallen short of the ideal we know we could live up to. And some of us don’t even make it that far, but instead elect to push the precise reasons for our less-than-ideal being into the cloud that perpetually hangs over our head. These are almost always the things that truly haunt us. How regularly do we search for honest answers in an attempt to inform our future decision making? Honest answers. The most uncomfortable truths that are often where we least want to look. It seems this is becoming increasingly rare. Today we’re told it is loving to tell yourself and others, “you’re okay just the way you are.” But what happens if you’re not okay? I believe it is wiser to consider the possibility that we may need change. And some portion of the misery you experience might just be your soul screaming out to you asking for that change. Do not be quick to abandon it.