When I was growing up, people frequently used insensitive language when referring to someone who was intellectually impaired or mentally ill. They said – we said – “He’s not all there.”

As insensitive as it was, it was not inaccurate; but it was too narrow. We could have said that about any and all of us. I’m not all there. You’re not all there. It is the human condition. Do you ever feel like something’s missing? There is a reason for that. Something is missing: you!

If we don’t understand this, we will look for what’s missing in all the wrong places. The entertainment media will convince us that what is missing is romance, or a different sexual orientation, or the freedom to follow our desires. Advertisers will convince us that what is missing is a new car, a new look, a new house, or a new medicine. If we don’t know better, we’ll believe them.

But you won’t find what you need in any of those places because what you need is you fulfilled – filled full. It’s what your whole being craves. What we need, as St. James’s once put it, is to “be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”