David Brooks delivered a commencement address at Rice University structured around two different routes to fulfillment. The first, described by Clay Christensen, involves identifying a clear purpose and organizing your life around it. The second, drawn from Viktor Frankl's 'Man's Search for Meaning,' involves being summoned by life rather than directing it. Brooks confessed that he had never been able to follow Christensen's method: 'I was not able at age 20 or 25 to sit down and think, pray and research and find a purpose for my life.' Instead, he argued for Frankl's approach: 'We don't ask, What do I want from life? Instead, we ask, What does my life ask of me?' The distinction was fundamental — one approach begins with the self, the other begins with the world. The closing line — 'The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It's to lose yourself' — directly inverted the most common self-help advice of the era. It was Brooks's most concentrated expression of the idea that meaning comes not from introspection but from engagement with tasks and problems larger than yourself. 'Your happiness and your worth are a byproduct of how you engage them,' he said. 'Life comes to a point only when the self dissolves into some larger task and summons.'