What Matters?
God? Family? Economic security? Art? Experience? Knowledge? The Texas Longhorns?
Each of us has our own response to the question. I know that I’ve been struggling with it for much of my life.
Maybe “struggle” isn’t the right word. Like most of us, I’ve been too busy living to give much thought to big questions like that. I mean, there’s been lots of fun to be had. Life crises to be navigated. And dishes. Always dishes.
But always lurking around at the back of my mind have been these nagging questions; Why do we exist? What makes me me? Why do I keep asking such stupid questions?
Fortunately, there has always been some shiny object to distract me before I get too far down the rabbit hole. But there is this one question- What Matters?- that seems to have some actual importance in my life. After all, how am I to decide what to do from one day to the next if I have no guidelines as to what I ought to be doing with my time? If I let society decide for me, I’m left with a lot of mixed messages; Family is important, but so is my job and the money that brings me. People matter, but there’s a problem with immigration. Things don’t matter, but have you checked out the new iPhone?So here I am, floundering about, mostly doing whatever is right in front of me, confused as ever.
Finally, in 2019, I’d had enough. After twenty years of living in Austin,Texas, we had very little to show for it. Friends, yes, but not much more. We didn’t have all the accouterments of the middle-class life that we strive for. No house of our own. No new car. No fancy vacations. No savings to speak of. So, after we talked it over for a good while, my wife Wendy and I decided to turn our back on all of that and see where the road might take us. By August, we’d gotten rid of half of our possessions, put the other half in storage, and hit the road. We’d become nomads. For a few months, we circled the country, visited with old friends, and had a generally good time.
Then came the pandemic. Once we realized that it wasn’t going to be over in two weeks, we had to figure out what to do next. I knew I wanted to continue moving forward. Unable to physically do so, I opted to move forward with a project that had been languishing on my hard drive for a good while. It was a passion project of mine, a documentary about my favorite band and the people that I’d experienced it with. I’d started it years before, but for various reasons, had never completed it. Now, with nothing but time, I had the opportunity to finish it, so I did. “Gimme Back My Band” was met with a smattering of applause, but more importantly, it awoke in me the desire to create, which I had sublimated for years.
Soon, we were back on the road, but now with a renewed sense of purpose. After completing one movie, I was ready to tackle another. Looking around for a subject, I remembered the question that I posed at the top of this post- What Matters? The idea had been taking up space in my brainpan for decades already, even predating my passion for videography. And it had remained no less pertinent. If anything, it had grown more so, both in terms of the fact that I was getting no younger and in that society at large seemed to be unraveling under a misapprehension of its answer.
So I set out to answer it. Knowing that I wasn’t necessarily the person to ask, I thought I’d ask someone who might know more than me. Which is just about everybody. So that’s who I asked. I reached out to old friends and made new friends along the way. I read a lot, and in the process began to see the question through the lenses of social psychology and philosophy. I took my inquiry to the thinkers and scientists who are working in those fields. After a while, I started to see the lines of commonality that connect us in our varying quests for meaning.
Which brings us to now. Now in my fourth year on this quest, I’ve started editing things together for the documentary that all of this has been leading to. And I’m ready to write down a little about what I’ve learned. It’s nothing earth-shaking. In fact, most of what I’ve figured out has been a part of the common wisdom for eons. But if you are ready and willing to let something that has been in your heart all along dictate how you ought to live, it will change the world. So read on. And watch the videos as they appear. Better yet, join the conversation.
Long Cut Productions is a dream dreamt by Wendy and Terry Humphries in 2019. Our first production, “Gimme Back My Band,” a film about seminal alt-country band Slobberbone, was released in June 2020.
Terry Humphries is or has been a juggler, a bus driver, a waiter, a security guard, a convenience store clerk, a real estate trust advisor, a filmmaker, and a writer of essays, screenplays, variety shows, and documentaries. He also once had a job hurling insults at people, who would then pay for the opportunity to throw tomatoes at him.
Wendy Humphries is or has been a scholar, a thespian, a musician, a counselor, a cog in the corporate machine, a dog and cat lover, a nerdy fangirl, a sometimes hippie chick, and a full-time dreamer. These days she attempts to wrangle a nascent production company, writing and shooting (with a camera, of course) her way into a new life.
Contact- terry@longcutproductions.com