As I've gotten older, the less I've seen that life is fair, and the less I've observed that people have equal opportunities in life. That is not an indictment of our society as that just being how things are, and my future work and life aspirations are in part attempts to rectify injustices and inequalities. A society based on merit cannot truly be equal if, well, not everyone has equal opportunity to attain that merit.

Columnist David Brooks echoes this sentiment in an article arguing against the spiritual failures of our individualistic culture. He first notes that people he admires live their lives in a two-mountain model. First, these people go through their first mountain, doing the things their parents wanted them to do and that society encourages them to do, like "make a mark, become successful, buy a home, raise a family, pursue happiness."

For a lot of these first mountain people, reputation matters, and matters a lot. "They ask: what do people think of me? Where do I rank? They're trying to win the victories the ego enjoys." Our individualistic and meritocratic culture leads to this false assumption that fulfillment follows from status or high reputation.

But the second mountain people are different. Something happened to "interrupt the linear existence they had imagined for themselves." No longer could these people live with their individualistic values. Some find success and find it unfulfilling, and try to find a higher purpose to their lives. Some people lost their employment or went through scandal, and "suddenly they were falling, not climbing, and their whole identity was in peril." Some people lost a child or went through cancers.

The biggest thing about what second mountain people go through is this: They "made the first-mountain victories seem, well, not so important." Their valley through their shadow of death leaves the "suffering and adrift," and some people do break from these hardships. Some people get afraid, isolate, and become "angry, resentful, and tribal." I know I've felt these emotions before throughout my second mountain troubles.

But instead of being broken apart, true second mountain people are broken open. "Suffering upends the normal patterns of life and reminds you that you are not who you thought you were. The basement of your soul is much deeper than you knew." Success won't fulfill the empty and open spaces in our hearts, but love from others, a friend and family, and a love in God do. Second mountain people know that they're the luckiest people alive, and "they're about to be dragged on an adventure that will leave them transformed."

Personally, I have learned personally the adage that the greatest life lessons come outside the classroom, that "life is actually defined by how you make use of your moment of greatest adversity." Brooks prescribes a stepwise plan for moral renewal and moving from a life of bad values to one of good ones and priorities.

First comes a moment in the wild, lost, "where self-reflection can occur." The voice in your head that centers around yourself, the "self-centered voice of the ego" has to die down before someone can give love and receive it, too.

After the period of solitude comes the spiritual renewal, the "contact with the heart and soul -- through prayer, meditation, and writing, whatever it is that puts you in contact with your deepest desires." This contact goes beyond what science can teach us, it's something that makes us yearn for desires of the heart and soul. Brooks labels desires of the heart "to live in loving connection with others" and desires of the soul "the yearning to serve some transcendent ideal and to be sanctified by that service." Broken open people realize that all the material things, like money, status, and reputation, and anything that can be quantified aren't the things that truly matter, but rather the larger journey they're on is what's more important.

Second mountain people, when they're being broken, are like people in any kind of crisis: they feel the same oscillation of emotions that regular people feel, just more strongly, from depression to joy. Some people in this stage of their lives radically change their lives, devoting themselves to some social or political cause or quitting their jobs to do something more meaningful. Brooks knew a woman whose son killed himself, and she said that the "scared, self-conscious woman she used to be died with him" Now, that woman helps families in crisis. Another person he knows used to be a banker, and when that job failed to satisfy, he started helping men coming out of prison. One person from Australia who lost his wife wrote to Brooks, after his period of reflection, that "I feel almost guilty about how significant my own growth has been as a result of my wife's death."

Most people don't radically change their lives -- they have the same jobs, same lives, but the people are different. "It's not about self anymore; it's about relation, it's about the giving yourself away. Their joy is in seeing others shine." In "Practical Wisdom," Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe talk about Luke, a hospital janitor. A young man was in a permanent coma after getting into a fight, and the man's father sat with him every day and Luke cleaned the room every day. One day, the father was on a smoke break and didn't interact with Luke that day. He snapped at Luke for not cleaning it (because he didn't see it) and instead of snapping at the father, as he would have when he was younger, Luke decided to go back in the room and clean it again, "so that the father could have the comfort of seeing you do it."

The first mountain is above building up the self. The second mountain is about breaking down the self and finding a new identity. "If the first mountain is about acquisition, the second mountain is about contribution." Brooks claims that the first mountain is about personal freedom and keeping options open, but that the second mountain is about commitment, to a town, person, institution, or cause. I'm not sure I agree with that sentiment, but he backs himself up by saying that "they have made a promise without expecting a return. They are all in." First mountain people are allied to theirselves, while second mountain people have an alliance to some bigger commitment. First mountain people work for a salary; second mountain people work to surrender to a shared cause.

Brooks claims that it is some moral and spiritual crisis we're going through, that society and culture should swap bad values for better ones. We've become a hyper-individualist culture at the expense of a community. The individual and the self have largely been at the center, but second mountain people fight for a culture that puts relationships at the center. They see "life [as] a qualitative endeavor, not a quantitative one," and see the full and complicated portraits of people instead of just stereotypes. These people, Brooks writes, are leading us into a new culture, a culture where a "small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy them."

He perhaps has the best illustration at the end of the article: first mountain people look for happiness, but second mountain people look for and are rewarded with joy. Happiness is what happens when we get victories for ourselves. Joy is when we transcend ourselves and serve something more, something greater. "On the second mountain you see that happiness is good, but joy is better."

I truly don't know if I'm a first mountain or second mountain person. I know that results do matter, and numbers do matter, but they don't matter as much to me anymore. I think I'm in a transitory phase, climbing up my second mountain, and I feel so lucky that I can grow and become a person that puts community and God first, and myself second. I feel so lucky that I can find joy, and one day, I might become one of the second mountain people that Brooks admires.