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A few years ago, Andrew Ishak and his friend Blake were cycling through Copenhagen when they found themselves, unexpectedly, standing at the grave of S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard. Ishak didn\u2019t know much about the philosopher at the time, but the encounter made him curious enough to start reading his work.<\/p>\n
He found a passage that has stayed with him since: that life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards\u2014and that at any given moment, it cannot be fully understood, because there is no moment where time stops completely.<\/p>\n
It is, perhaps, an odd passage for a communication professor to carry around. But for Ishak, it captured something essential about how he moves through the world.<\/p>\n
So when he was asked to participate in Santa Clara\u2019s quarterly \u201cSearch for What Matters\u201d speaker series, Ishak prepared for months with a level of introspection that would\u2019ve made Kierkegaard proud. He combed through a decade of student evaluations for hidden clues about his soul, conducted a \u201crigorous analysis\u201d of his Spotify listening habits, and rewatched \u201cForrest Gump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, as he finally took the stage earlier this year, he shared his honest answer to the question: \u201cWhat matters to me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI really wish I had a clear answer for you,\u201d Ishak said. \u201cBut the truth is, I don\u2019t. At least not yet. The best answer I can give you is: I\u2019m still searching.\u201d<\/p>\n
What followed was not an evasion but an exploration\u2014instead of one certain answer, he offered 10 \u201cbest guesses\u201d of what matters most to him, drawn from a life spent thinking carefully about time, culture, creativity, and the texture of human connection. Taken together, they reveal a man less interested in having answers than in asking better questions.<\/p>\n
1. Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity<\/p>\n
Ishak does not understand Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity. He has tried\u2014YouTube videos, PBS specials, books\u2014and the concept of time dilation has remained stubbornly opaque. He chose a college major specifically to avoid taking physics. He also doesn\u2019t understand how Wi-Fi works, or how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, or, as Insane Clown Posse put it, \u201cmagnets\u2014how do they work?\u201d<\/p>\n
But this guess is more about wonder, not physics.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoy the wonder that comes from living in that mystery,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly freeing to know that the world doesn\u2019t need my comprehension to be beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
2. Bananas<\/p>\n
Ishak comes from what he calls \u201ca fruit family.\u201d His house is always full of it. He has ranked his top thirty-five fruits.<\/p>\n
His wife, Heather? Not a fruit fan.<\/p>\n
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And yet, after a decade of family road trips to Southern California, Heather has gotten used to Ishak\u2019s mother seemingly materializing bananas from some unknown reserve as much-needed snacks on the road and in hotel rooms. For Heather, the banana has become, over the years, unavoidable. And if they\u2019re not eaten\u2026 the smell becomes even more unavoidable.<\/p>\n
So, Heather chose to lean in, and now even travels in a banana-print shirt.<\/p>\n
The banana, Ishak explained, has come to stand for something larger: the things we didn\u2019t choose but that are somehow good for us anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never want a banana,\u201d he said. \u201cBut every time I have one, it\u2019s great. So, I\u2019m really intrigued by the things that God puts in my life that I didn\u2019t ask for and wouldn\u2019t choose, but are good for me and are things I ultimately enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n
3. Falling in the toilet at preschool<\/p>\n
This is his earliest memory. He didn\u2019t put the seat down. In he went, butt first. It is not a good memory, he acknowledged, but it is the first one he has.<\/p>\n
The real question underneath the story is this: would you want to have the best experience of your life\u2014pure pleasure, no pain\u2014if you knew you\u2019d have no memory of it afterward? For Ishak, the answer is no.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe point of an experience is not just the pleasure of living it,\u201d he said. \u201cI want the inside jokes. I want to tell stories at dinner with family for the next 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
He often thinks of his Uncle Samy, who died a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I tell a story about him, I feel like that memory brings him right into the present moment with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Memory, he suggested, is how the people we love stay with us after they\u2019re gone. Maybe life is about collecting moments we can keep sharing.<\/p>\n
4. Not writing academic articles<\/p>\n
During his talk, Ishak pulled out the old VHS camera his parents gave him before college\u2014the one he used to make goofy short films with his friends. In graduate school, a professor told him he\u2019d have to give up filmmaking if he wanted to succeed in academia. He did. After completing a documentary in 2008, he slowed down on his creative projects for the next 10 years.<\/p>\n
Then his department chair at Santa Clara, Mike Whalen, mentioned, cheerfully, that creative work was not only allowed but encouraged.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat opened a door for me,\u201d Ishak said.<\/p>\n
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In 2018, he committed to making 52 short films in a year\u2014one per week\u2014and learned more in that year than in all his previous years combined. He is now completing a scripted series about the Coptic Orthodox church as seen through the eyes of a priest and developing a mockumentary a la \u201cThe Office\u201d set in an academic department.<\/p>\n
For Ishak, creativity means taking something overlooked\u2014a priest\u2019s daily life, a professor\u2019s cluttered office\u2014and framing it so others can see its wonder.<\/p>\n
\u201cCreating is challenging yourself to share with others something that they might see the remarkable beauty in.\u201d<\/p>\n
5. Buying shoes<\/p>\n
Ishak owns a lot of shoes, especially for the many different sports he plays. He has tennis shoes, indoor soccer shoes, golf shoes\u2014and a whopping nine pairs of basketball shoes. (Now ten, he confesses, since his Search for What Matters talk took place.)<\/p>\n
But for Ishak, what matters isn\u2019t being a sneakerhead; it\u2019s why he buys these shoes. It\u2019s about what happens when a group of people plays a sport together so well that they stop being a collection of individuals. Bill Russell, an eleven-time NBA champion, described the feeling in his memoir: a game so fast that every move was surprising and yet nothing could surprise him\u2026 chills pulsing up and down his spine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something sublime about playing or working together in a way that dissolves your own ego,\u201d Ishak said.<\/p>\n
He finds it in sports, choir, dancing in the kitchen, or singing Silent Night in a candlelit church on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you stop being individuals and start to be part of a shared experience that goes beyond self, it feels like nothing else is better.\u201d<\/p>\n
6. Love and gratitude<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t need to explain these, do I? This is probably the answer,\u201d he said, followed by a quote from \u201cForrest Gump:\u201d \u201cAnd that\u2019s all I have to say about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
7. Time<\/p>\n
Ishak studies time. He teaches a class on it. He is, by his own description, obsessed with it. Time, he said, is our greatest currency\u2014the one resource that billionaires are desperately trying to buy more of. And what we spend it on reveals what we actually believe matters.<\/p>\n
Simone Weil wrote that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. In a world of infinite distraction, choosing to give someone your full presence\u2014\u201cI\u2019m going to give you my time because you matter to me\u201d\u2014has become a radical act.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more time I spend with people I love,\u201d he said, \u201cthe richer I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
8. Smoking<\/p>\n
Not cigarettes, he clarified quickly, although the smell of cigarette smoke does unlock sensory memories from cafes in Egypt and train stations in France.<\/p>\n
No, what really interests him is smoke as a symbol. In the Coptic Orthodox tradition he belongs to, incense smoke represents prayer and our ability to communicate with the divine. Citing St. Augustine\u2019s view of the sacraments, Ishak sees smoke as making an invisible grace momentarily visible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am seeking to understand,\u201d Ishak said. \u201cI want to understand as best as I can, and symbols like smoke help me get a little bit closer. It takes something that\u2019s supernatural, mystical, and beyond human comprehension, and frames it in the five senses.\u201d<\/p>\n
9. Question marks<\/p>\n
His wife confirmed it: he asks too many questions. He\u2019s curious about everything\u2014what his daughter was thinking when she painted something a certain way, his son\u2019s strategy in building an aquarium, what Gen Z slang his students are using, what a stranger on a train finds meaningful about their city.<\/p>\n
At its core, he said, this curiosity is not intellectual restlessness but something closer to care.<\/p>\n
\u201cI care about your passions, your motives, your ideas, your perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so, when pressed for the most honest answer to the question of what matters to him, he turned it around on his rapt audience: \u201cWhat matters to you\u2014and why? Learning about the people in my life, to me, is so much more important.\u201d<\/p>\n
10. Buying plane tickets in February<\/p>\n
For you, he said, it might be making a restaurant reservation, or putting a date night on the calendar, or taking everything off the calendar. The specific thing matters less than what it represents: anticipation.<\/p>\n
Research from Carnegie Mellon and Cornell suggests we often enjoy the waiting more than the event itself. A University of Michigan study found that elderly people with something to look forward to lived significantly longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever gets me up in the morning is what matters to me,\u201d Ishak said. \u201cAnd I like that it\u2019s not the same thing every day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A few years ago, Andrew Ishak and his friend Blake were cycling through Copenhagen when they found themselves,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-272802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-san-jose","9":"tag-san-jose-headlines","10":"tag-san-jose-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}