Transcription
Good morning. I would like to apologize because I do not speak Estonian and I have no idea what she just said about me. So I have to trust it was something nice.
I am from the United States of America. I am sure you have heard of the United States of America, right? Right. No. And if I asked you what do you know about the United States of America? School shootings. What was that? F3. The F35. That's that's good.
If I asked you what you knew about Americans and life in America, and then I I would have to ask, how do you know this? I live there. Someone lives there. Tick Tock, right? Like much of what we know is from media, movies, right? Social media, Snapchat, Instagram. Do you think that's an accurate vision of what we are like? Nope. Because I know Americans aren't the only ones that post things on social media that look very nice that aren't exactly the whole story about how we really are. Like, is that true in your country? Do you use social media? So I don't know anything very much about what it's like for you to be in this country. I know a lot of what it's like to be in America.
In fact, I even know in America, my children, we talk a lot. I have seven children. Um, the youngest is 16, and we talk a lot about how social media, even for Americans, gives a false idea about what it means to be a human being, even to be an American. And as we're maturing, part of maturing is figuring out who I am and what I believe and what I think. But if we turn to these images, they give a they send a message, but we know it doesn't really reflect the whole story. So part of growing up is learning, what do I believe? What do I think?
So I'm curious a little bit about your world in Estonia. Um, I'm curious because in America, in high schools, people do things like dating. Do you do that in Estonia? Are you allowed to date in Estonia? Because some cultures in America, they prohibit it. Other couples, other other cultures, other places in America, it's really kind of a crazy culture. They do things starting like in sixth grade where you will have a crush on someone. Do you have crushes in Estonia? And then no. And then what they think is, if I have a crush on someone, I should date them, right? Does that happen in your country? Do people get crushes? Do people date in Estonia? Why do people date in your country? To not be lonely. What's that? To not be lonely. To not be lonely, right? Because, you know, I ask my kids the same question, why do your friends date? Why do you date? And of course, they're my children, so they roll their eyes and they say, I don't want to talk about it. But they say often, to be lonely, 'cause I'm lonely, and this is a way to feel connected to someone. Any other reason people date? A C. Excellent. To be socially accepted. It seems more popular, more fit in. Do those sound like good reasons to enter into that type of relationship?
So I think there's something good about that, but I think there's something curious or interesting. And what I tell my kids is, you are old enough and smart enough enough to actually think about why am I doing what I'm doing? What am I looking for? And does this make sense? Because in America, I look at what happens in dating relationships. How do most dating relationships end? Breakup. A nice, peaceful breakup with no drama? No, no. A nice, peaceful breakup with nobody getting hurt? What happens to a friend group when two people in the friend group all of a sudden date and then they break up in a painful breakup? Not good.
Cuz in America, most dating relationships end up somebody getting hurt. Or the relationship starts because you have a crush on someone and then you think, I should date, or they want to date me, and then you date. Well, then after some time, oh, you get a crush on someone else. Oh, so now should I break up with this person and go to this person? Well, if the reason I dated is because I had these feelings and attractions, they go away. Someone else, and suddenly I date someone else until there's a little conflict, and then I have a crush on someone else. And so I break up with that person. And in a strange way, that dating culture prepares us for a divorce culture. That we never quite learn how do I start a relationship? Why do I start a relationship? Who do I choose to be in a relationship with? What am I looking for? And then when we do have difficulties, what do I do to navigate that?
So my question is, is there a good reason to date? Is there a good reason to enter into that type of intimate relationship? Discover on what? Find out. Rel. Number one, to discover something about ourselves. And then you're saying, what? To learn what this other person wants in a relationship. So I agree, we are created to be in relationships. We are created, we believe, by a God whose three persons in relationship. So we are not only naturally, we come out of a relationship, but we mature in and through relationships. We learn about ourselves in relationships. We learn how to relate to people in relationship. And we're create, we're not meant to be alone. And we actually in America have a crisis of isolation that many people live alone and don't have a community or any close relationships. We cannot thrive as human beings without being in relationships, which means specifically, we need people in our lives who know us. It's not just one person who knows everything about us, but we're created to be in a network of relationship where everything within us is known by somebody. And part of maturing is learning how to have this network of relationships, things like family, extended family, friends, a community, mentors, teachers, a coach, so older people, peers. It creates a network of people where everything inside me is known by somebody. We're not meant to just have one relationship with someone. So we are created to enter into that.
So when we think about, um, what we need, if we, we, part of living in this world is we experience a type of loneliness. We have a desire to be known, and we have these attractions and desires. So a good reason to be in relationships is to get to know about ourselves. But do we need to date to learn about ourselves and to let people know who we are? Depends on what aspects. Depends on what aspects. Tell me about that. What would happen? Imagine if you grow up and you go off to college and you have never dated anyone, but you have a network of people who know you, who you've gone through life with. We would think more of a group of friends who you struggle with, you learn from, they, they sometimes criticize you because you're annoying, and sometimes you, you criticize them because they're annoying, and you're kind of learning how to be in a relationship. Are you missing out on something? Of our Devas r. Those relationship. Excellent. Some part of our lives has to do with romantic, intimate relationship with one person. That, what that romantic intimate? Right, absolutely. And so we need to learn to have that. But what for? What's the purpose of that? I mean, unless in Estonia, kids just do things without thinking, right? Unless in Estonia, you're not able to think? Does that make sense? Or I see it in the movies, that's why I must do it. Because in America, it is really tempting. We see this in the movies, this is how it should be. You know, these fun, you know, these movies that all they, they meet their soulmate, they fall in love, and they immediately get together, and then they live forever, ever happily ever after, and they die like 30 minutes apart. You know what that's called? Fiction. But it's not just fiction. It kind of speaks to a longing that we have. That we do have a longing for intimacy. We have a longing to be known and to be known deeply by someone. And I think we need to honor that. However, what we see is we need to learn how to be in that type of relationship. Because imagine if someone has a crush on you and they really like you and they just want to be with you because you cure their loneliness. Isn't that a, would you like that? Good job. There's something that doesn't seem right because it's easy in relationships to actually enter into relationships for very self-centered reasons. And often times the wave of emotions and feelings that we are, we call love, are actually immature and self-centered. I'm going into a relationship to get something, which is not entirely inappropriate because we are all becoming mature. But if I, I would ask you, what are the characteristics of a mature relationship? Would you say that self-centeredness and using someone to meet my needs and desires would be a characteristic of a mature relationship? No. So what we see in our lives is a healthy relationship, whether it's friends or groups or individuals, is where we are each becoming mature. We are learning to think as much about the other person as myself. We are learning to think about the other person more than just act out of what I'd like. And so my concern about the dating culture is I don't think the dating culture promotes mature relationships and promotes maturing in relationship because the characteristics of a mature relationship are, I know why I'm entering into this relationship, and it is not just for myself. I am not just entering into this relationship because I feel like it. Because when we think about that intimate relationship with one person, that has some characteristics that keep it healthy. There are characteristics to an intimate relationship that keep it healthy, and we know them instinctively. Like, number one is faithfulness, fidelity. If you have an intimate relationship with someone, we call it a betrayal, uh, if you violate that intimacy with someone else. That's the characteristic. One of the characteristics of a healthy intimate relationship is fidelity. The other characteristic of a healthy intimate relationship is a lifetime. We don't enter into a relationship like that thinking, I'll just be really close to you for a few years until I don't feel like it anymore, and then I'm going to leave. That something feels wrong about that. And we see that we were created to be in lifetime, faithful relationships. That is our longing. How do we learn how to have those types of relationships? How do we learn how to have a relationship that's built on respect for the other, not using the other, that's built on a type of commitment to be faithful and long-term? Can I suggest the best way to learn how to have those relationships is to have close relationships with a group of people that we learn about ourselves through? We might say friendships. But in America, friendship is like a a bad word. Cuz if someone tells you, I just want to be your friend, we don't, people, we don't like that. That's bad. But the truth is, I've been married for 31 years, and most of the time with my wife, we are being friends, learning how to be friends, learning how to respect each other, learning how to work together. All the skills that we learn before we're married by our peers. That at the heart of learning who we are is not necessarily having an exclusive relationship, but learning who we are through one another. So does that mean we shouldn't date? Should the, should the school make a rule? No dating? I don't know. I'm asking. Well, um, is there a good reason to date then? What's that? Learning. Even if the relationship is immature, it provides a learning opportunity. I would challenge that to say, I'm not sure there's something you need to learn in a dating relationship that couldn't be better learned through friendships without the damaging effects of dating, unless you can tell me otherwise. Now, I do not think there should be a rule against dating because when I was in high school, if they made a rule against something, guess what that would lead me to do? I would break it. So I never told my kids, you can't date. But the rule I would recommend is, you should not be in a relationship without thinking about it. Why am I doing this? What am I looking for? Am I longing for something? And is this really the best thing? I don't need to be told by my parents how to think or what to think, but we are old enough to be able to think. So I ask my kids, are you thinking? Are you dating someone just because you have a crush on them? What's that? Are you making a long-term commitment? Are you making a commitment to get to know someone? And is that relationship based on respect? And what's powerful, if you ask me, is you don't see that so much in the media. You don't see that so much in the movies. There's nothing really spectacular, but there's something deeply fulfilling about learning to have good connections with each other and good friendships. We were created for that. But what that requires is, I can't just act on every impulse I have. I want to learn how to respect the people around me as my peers. And that process of learning that is actually how we mature as human beings, as we learn to think more about respecting others rather than acting on my desires or getting what I want. That is the definition of maturity in many ways. And if I pursue that maturity, I end up finding a mature person to journey with through life and actually finding that deep fulfillment that comes from learning how to have a relationship with someone else who is also thinking more about me than they are about themselves. Most relationships struggle because of our own selfishness and immaturity. So we prepare for this deep relationship by learning how to be mature, learning how to think about others.
What I think is interesting whenever I travel is there are differences in our culture, but number one, those differences are are are not so dramatic because we all watch the same things online because social media crosses all our national boundaries. The other thing that I think is even more beautiful is no matter where I go, we are all the same as human beings. We are all the same in what it means to be mature. We are all the same in terms of what is a fulfilling life. We're all the same in terms of our desires to be in relationship. And the rules of relationships are the same no matter where you are in the world because as persons being in relationships where we are growing in mutual respect, learning to attend to the others, making that commitment of fidelity over a lifetime, that's the same no matter where you go because that is our shared humanity. And to learn that and to grow that, we need a community of others to help us. Questions or comments about that? So, oh, there it is. Okay. Are you allowed in Estonia to disagree with the speaker? I just want to, 'cause Americans feel like they can disagree. But I thought that was just Americans. Go, I'm just kidding. Please. I welcome not only disagreement. The invitation is to think and to reflect because I don't think we do well when someone tells us what to think, but I think we do great when someone challenges us to think and we think about agreeing or disagreeing. Yeah, I would disagree with the point of that every in every place in every person that the same things are fulfilling in life. There would be some common characteristics, pretty much. I would say, you know, leaving something behind that is larger than than than one's own life. But, but even, and also in relationships, I don't, I don't agree that every, every single rule is, uh, is set in stone. But it all, all still depends on mutual respect and communication. Are you suggesting that no matter where you are in the world, every human being that respect and M mutual respect is a characteristic of a healthy relationship, no matter what? No matter what culture? I would say so. Yeah. Mutual that in the nature of relationships are the same within any culture. That if you come to a culture where there is a lack of respect for persons, you're going to see relationships and people suffer. That's my point. So what are you disagreeing with? Did you just agree with me accidentally? Somewhat agree. But I would disagree with some, some of the other ideas. You don't want to totally agree with me? Yeah, not totally. I know that's that's a little risky. Yeah. Uh, I would, I wouldn't disagree that what some respect entails, like fidelity, necessarily. I don't, I don't think that necessarily fidelity and mutual respect is, you know, are ex are universal. Universal. Yeah, exactly. Mhm. I would say the same thing about, um, consideration, selflessness. Like nowhere in the world, if you are just thinking about yourselves and just acting out of your own desires, a, that's, that you can't have a healthy human relationship. That's a characteristic of our humanity. Every one of us is longing to be known and loved. So if you enter in a relationship with someone who's thinking all about himself or all about herself, we're going to notice that and feel that. And the invitation as for us as we mature, sure, as we think, I'm in this relationship to learn how to consider who you are and consider what you are and consider what you think, rather than I'm just in this relationship for myself. Any relationship around the globe. Now, I will qualify that the notion of human slavery does not, does not consider that. But that's why we reject slavery because it denies the humanity of a person. And that is not a healthy relationship. That's a destructive relationship, which is why we reject it. Because to, to not consider a person as a human being, just destroys a real relationship. Yeah. Do you think, uh, some people don't have like romantic attractions at all in all their life? What a great question. Do I think there are some people that do not have romantic attractions in their whole life? I'm going to answer a different question first, and then I'll answer that. Right. In America, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the crazy world we live in. In America, if by sixth grade you are not having romantic attractions with someone, they call that a problem. And they like create words around it. That must mean I'm this. Because in America, I think partly because of the media and partly because of our loneliness, suddenly the most significant relationship is the romantic one. And so it is normal and appropriate to, especially when we are growing, to not have romantic attractions or to have all sorts of romantic attractions, which is why I mentioned it's dangerous. Could you date 'cause you're going to suddenly have a romantic attraction to someone else? It is normal and appropriate to not have the attractions or to have all sorts of attractions. This is why I said to enter into friendships and groups allows us to learn to mature in healthy relationships, no matter what attractions we do or we don't have. And the answer to your question, absolutely. People go through life with ever having that. That is not a problem. That's a fact. But now imagine if you lived in a culture where people said, falling in love is the meaning of life, finding a soulmate, that's the most meaningful thing. Suddenly, everyone who doesn't experience that is now thinking, maybe there's something wrong with me. My answer is, there's something wrong with that story. But remember where that story starts? That story starts in sixth grade when someone has a crush, and that means something, and you should have a crush. What I've noticed in America is that's a very dominant story. That that is the meaning of life. And we see schools and people at all ages where their lives are revolving around with whom they have a crush. No, it's much more normal. We have friends. We need to be known by someone. That's what gives us life. More questions? Yes, I have a question about, uh, the epidemic of loneliness that you mentioned at the beginning of your talk. Uh, what do you think, uh, are the root causes of this epidemic, and what would be your suggestions, uh, for young people to escape it? The, I think the causes, some of the causes, number one, and especially in my country, is wealth. I live in a home that we consider small. We only have three bedrooms, and I have seven children. It's a little tight. Most of my friends, everyone has their own room, and it's on a second floor, and then they have a first floor, and it's a, it's a big area, and the neighbors are farther away. Most of human history, everyone slept in the same room. Most of human history, we lived very close together, and life was difficult, and we needed each other. And what happened is, you could never be lonely if every night you're sleeping in the same bed as three of your siblings and your grandparents. There is no loneliness in that world. I think that's more natural to our human nature. Number one, that we are more isolated physically. Number two, in this world we live in, we live in a very comfortable world, many of us. And so when we have difficulties, we don't know what to do. When we have difficulties in relationships, we don't know what to do. So we push people away. And so what happens is, we don't know how conflict and struggle is the path of toward intimacy. Difficulties are the path of growing close to each other. And we live, we, we, we live in a world where we, we want things a little easier, and we think struggle is not okay. So we avoid the struggle that leads to intimacy. And the third thing is, especially in America, if we live in a world that's about myself and what I want, it leads to, you know, having children, and you're not really connected to your children. So the children grow up isolated. So it's a, it's a combination of these internal, you know, our desires. Wouldn't it be great to get everything you want? We're all, our instinct is to get what I want. Now, at least in America, you can get what you want, and it ends up leaving you isolated in a culture. And the last thing is, we don't have the, these types of communities as much anymore. People used to live around the church, around the community. And now in America, you don't. So it's a, the more isolated, the more individual we act, the more loneliness there was. There a question in the back of the room? I also had a question here, please. Uh, so could you also go over the Hilty steps of, uh, finding a virtuous, uh, way to marriage or, you know, finding a spouse? You said the steps to find a spouse? Yes. I think the steps to finding a spouse are focusing on yourself and becoming the type of person that you want to be. If you focus on that, right? And then having just good friendships, you end up attracting people to you who are going in that direction. I think as we learn, if we focus on our own maturity and also just having friendships, right? We don't isolate ourselves, and we learn not to be so self-centered. We learn to have relationships. I think that sets the groundwork for meeting someone who wants to do that. That would be what I would say in 30 seconds. Do you have a followup? But how to recogniz that this is the person? Oh, how to recognize this is, I'm not just dating now, going into dating, which should be avoided. No, I, I, when we are at a point in our lives where we are prepared to have a lifetime relationship, I think it's really good if you connect with someone that you get to know them privately and learn about their vision for having a lifetime together. So you get to know someone, what is their vision? When I met my wife, I was dating. I was ready to have a lifetime relationship, and I would go out on dates and get to know people. And it, as I, you know, I learned a lot about myself by connecting with other people, and I learned a lot about women by connecting with people. And what I had before I got married was a network of friends that that were my age, boys and girls. In fact, I had such a nice network of friends who were boys and girls before I got married, and we would do things together, we would connect. To this day, when I go back to Chicago, where I live, I see them, and we are still friends, and our children are now friends, and we, I have that connection. And it feels very fulfilling to have those types of friends. So my finding my wife came out of what I'm encouraging you to do, not to date, but have a network of friends who are boys and girls, 'cause that network lasts a lifetime. So that's how did I know it was her? Because she was exactly like I was, and how we saw things about what marriage is for, which we don't have time to talk about. Because I learned, I had to learn what is dating for, and then I learned what marriage is for, and then I thought, oh my gosh, so when I would meet girls, we talk about it, I was like, oh, they have a different understanding. When I met my wife, she's like, that's my understanding. So I proposed to her right then? No, I didn't do that. But that's how the back of the room. Maybe our final question. Final question. Do you think humans are monogamous? Do I think humans are monogamous? What a great question. We are out of time today, boys and girls. So I believe very deeply that is like saying, do you think humans are patient? How do you think humans are kind? What's that? How does that correlate? What I'll tell you, how would you answer that? Are we kind? Are we? Does it depend on the person, or is kindness something that we aim for, but our nature can be selfish and angry? So are humans angry, or are we patient? To be a mature human, to find fulfillment as a human being, is to resist the temptation toward anger and resist the temptation of acting on your desires and to be kind and to be patient and to be selfless. To be a human is what we are becoming. And I say that, here's the correlation. I don't think monogamy is natural, just like I don't think self-control is natural. But I think it's human. That to thrive as a human being is to learn self-control, self-discipline. To thrive in an intimate relationship requires monogamy because, um, there's some, there's things you can only learn by being in a life lifetime relationship with the same person. But in order for that relationship to work, my wife and I each need to be changed. And people turn away from that and they say, that's unnatural. I say, well, at some level, so is forgiveness and patience. That's unnatural. What's natural is I want to punch you. So no, there's always going to be tempting things. But to, for true intimacy requires that I acquire the ability for monogamy. Does that answer your question? Sure. Thank you. Sure. What a sure. All right, thank you very much. It's nice to meet everyone. Come and visit me in the United States anytime. Okay, thank you.