There is this beautiful scene towards the end of The Wire. Jimmy McNulty, after struggles with alcoholism, self-sabotage, and an unhealthy work obsession, comes back to Beadie Russell. Beadie is a single mom with a stable home, who Jimmy tried and failed to settle down with.
And Beadie breaks it all down to Jimmy.
All the guys at the bar, Jimmy. All the girls. They don’t show up at your wake. Not because they don’t like you. Because they never knew your last name. A month later someone tells them: “Oh, Jimmy died”, “Jimmy who”, “Jimmy the cop”, “Oh”, they say. “Him.”
And all the people on the job. All the people you spend all those hours in the radio car with. The guys with their feet up on the desk telling stories, who shorted you on the food runs, who signed your overtime slips. In the end, they’re not going to be there either.
Family, that’s it. Family. And if you’re lucky, one or two friends who are the same as family. That’s all the best of us get.
I started an X thread almost three years ago. A screencap caught my eye. A devastating chart. I put them together. And I’ve been adding to it ever since.
Are we losing interest in things that matter? Are we losing interest in family, in friendships, in heart, in humanity?
There are these moments we get. Sitting around a table. Laughing, smiling. Sharing food. These precious moments. Moments that follow effort: invitations, travel, cleaning, cooking, it takes effort to get together. To make time. Moments that are worth remembering. Moments that are worth living for.
I’ve had so many blessings in life, none more special to me than sitting around the Passover table. My parents, my brothers and their families. My aunt who may as well be a sister. Food and songs and customs that go back centuries.
Of course I didn’t appreciate it at the time. Of course I didn’t. But I am getting older, and perhaps wiser. And when I look back on my life, those are the moments that mean the most.
Chengdu is a city in Sichuan Province, China’s deep south. I was recently there for a long-overdue visit with extended family, and they welcomed me with hospitality and warmth and lots of hotpot. It is interesting how people who have the least are the most generous. They didn’t have much but they wanted to give me whatever they have. They wanted to share things with me.
Hotpot isn’t just a cuisine. It’s a communal meal. The tables are round. The food is round. Everything is shared, there is no “my dish, your dish”. It is designed to bring people together. It is a shared experience.
These are moments that matter.
Something has gone wrong. Culturally, something has gone wrong. I don’t know if it is the screens, or the death of religion, or the space between suburban homes, or what. But we aren’t connected. We aren’t a community.
We are an unhealthy society. We’ve been poisoned. And we better get serious about talking about it, because it isn’t going to cure itself.
We’ve been distracted by endless bickering over these culture wars that wedge us into sides. Your neighbor is your enemy if they don’t agree with you about the filibuster, whatever that is. You’ll get no fulfillment from fighting about The Current Thing. You’ll find no enlightenment on CNN or on TikTok, or from a politician's speech. You can’t be a “political junkie” and be happy at the same time.
Political wars and culture wars are not Things That Matter.
Family. One or two friends who are the same as family. Spirituality. These are the Things That Matter.
And if organized religion is the only way to recapture it, then so be it.
I am hopeful for the future, and I am confident in our ability to course-correct. If that means we embrace organized religion and revive the church, then revive the church we must.
Our culture is dying. We’ve lost sight of Things That Matter. And we better start talking about it before it is too late.
Invite your family over for a meal.
Go to church.
Put in the effort for those Things That Matter.