If You're Going to Chase Something, Chase Connection

We just finished our fifth year of the marriage retreat that Dr. Erica and I developed and present at the Franciscan Renewal Center, which five years ago we titled "Marriage, It's Not for the Faint of Heart" - and it once again solidified for me a fundamental truth. At the end of the day, when the noise dies down and the lights go low, what really matters is surprisingly simple.

Connection.

Not the polished version of life we show the world. Not the milestones we post, the numbers we chase, or the roles we try to outrun. What lasts is whether we felt seen. Whether we were known. Whether we loved and were loved in return.

And yet, most of us spend our lives sprinting toward everything else.

We chase achievement, assuming it will finally quiet the anxiety. We chase security, believing it will make us feel safe enough to rest. We chase approval, productivity, status, certainty. We chase the version of ourselves we think will finally be enough.

None of that is foolish. It is human. We are wired to survive. To matter. To belong.

But somewhere along the way, survival becomes substitution. We trade presence for performance. We trade relationships for resumes. We trade intimacy for efficiency. And we tell ourselves we will circle back to what matters once things slow down.

They rarely do.

In my work, I sit with people at turning points. After the job loss. After the diagnosis. After the divorce. After the kids are grown. After the grief arrives uninvited. And almost never do they say, “I wish I had worked more hours,” or “I wish I had worried more.”

What they say, again and again, is some version of this:

“I wish I had been more present.” “I wish I had said the hard thing.” “I wish I had loved more bravely.” “I wish I had let myself be known.”

Connection is not a bonus feature of a good life. It is the foundation.

It's the quiet text that says, “I’m here.” The long pause before responding defensively. The courage to stay in a difficult conversation. The willingness to sit with someone’s pain without fixing it. The choice to put the phone down and look someone in the eyes.

These moments rarely feel efficient. They don'tt scale well. They don't impress algorithms.

But they're the moments that shape a life.

The tragedy is not that we care about the wrong things. It's that we let those things crowd out what matters most. We postpone connection as if it were optional, as if there will always be more time, more energy, more later.

There is not always more later.

There is this moment. This conversation. This relationship. This chance to show up a little more honestly than you did yesterday.

If you strip life down to its core, past the fear and the striving and the noise, what remains is simple and demanding all at once.

How did you love? How did you stay? Who did you choose to be with when it would have been easier to disappear?

Connection does not require perfection. It requires presence.

And presence, practiced daily, quietly reshapes everything else.

In the end, it is not what you accumulated that tells the story of your life. It is who you walked with. Who you risked yourself for. Who knew your real name when the titles fell away.

That is what remains.

And that is still available, today, if you are willing to choose it.