Why Were the Graves of So Many Jewish GIs Marked by a Cross?
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Why you can be busy, entertained, and still feel empty.
There’s a compelling draw in consuming other people’s realities through movies, novels, and social media, because for a while you get to escape your own. Stories let you experience emotion without responsibility, adventure without risk, connection without vulnerability.
People escape into food, alcohol, stimulation, endless scrolling and noise, moving quickly from one thing to another because silence can feel uncomfortable. Even walking for ten minutes without checking your phone, putting on music, or listening to a podcast has become difficult for many people.
Even work can become a place to hide. When every moment is occupied, you never have to slow down long enough to notice what is happening internally.
Emptiness demands a relief. The problem is that distraction and excitement fade quickly, pushing people to search for the next experience, the next purchase, the next trip, the next obsession, hoping that eventually one of them will create something lasting.
How do you attain lasting happiness?
Genuine joy comes through deep human connection and through the fulfillment that comes from growth and meaningful effort.
According to Jewish thought, genuine joy grows in two powerful ways: through deep human connection and through the fulfillment that comes from growth and meaningful effort.
Some of the happiest moments in life are surprisingly simple.
Sitting on the floor playing with a child. Watching them become fascinated by something so small and insignificant that most adults would never even notice it. Sharing coffee with a friend and losing track of time because the conversation feels real. Calling an old relative you haven’t spoken to properly in years. Smiling at someone in the supermarket and watching their face soften back at you.
These moments rarely look impressive from the outside. Yet they often leave you feeling fuller than the experiences you spend months anticipating.
Human beings are built for connection. And in today’s digitized world, it’s dangerously easy to slowly drift into isolation without even realizing it.
People communicate while rarely feeling deeply connected, sending messages all day while feeling an underlying sense of loneliness. That emptiness has a way of making even pleasurable experiences feel thin.
Real connection affects you differently. Being fully present with another person pulls you outside the endless noise of your own thoughts. There is something healing about laughing together, listening carefully, feeling seen, giving attention to another person without distraction.
These moments bring a kind of fullness that entertainment cannot replicate. And they require effort: to make the phone call, invite someone for coffee, sit with your child without checking your phone every few minutes.
Small moments of connection slowly fill spaces inside you that constant stimulation never reaches.
There is another kind of happiness that comes through effort, discipline, and overcoming resistance.
Most meaningful things in life involve difficulty: that diploma you worked so hard for brought real joy because of the effort involved in reaching it; the marathon runner crossing the finish line; overcoming a destructive habit.
The counterfeit pleasure of comfort is fleeting and leaves a vacuum in its wake.
But part of you craves comfort. You should go for the run but stay on the couch instead. You avoid the difficult conversation. You procrastinate a job that needs to get done. You choose distraction because facing reality feels overwhelming.
The counterfeit pleasure of comfort is fleeting and leaves a vacuum in its wake.
Genuine pleasure comes from the moments you push through: force yourself out of bed early even though every part of you wants to stay under the blanket; finally sitting down and dealing with the thing you’ve been avoiding; keeping your anger in check.
Choosing long-term satisfaction over immediate gratification builds your inner self-respect. You connect to your soul, becoming steadier, more resilient, less controlled by moods and impulses.
Beneath both sources of joy, connection and achievement, runs the same truth: meaning requires your full presence. Not a curated version of you, performing for an audience. Not a distracted version, half-present with one eye on your phone. But you, actually there, in the moment, willing to feel what it brings.
The restlessness many people carry is a sign that they're looking for something real. Connection gives you that. So does the satisfaction of doing hard things well. Neither requires money or perfect circumstances. They require only the willingness to show up, honestly, again and again.
Based on ideas in Tziporah Heller Gottlieb’s book Infinite Love
