If I were asked, I would say the one pressing question that has defined my life is a short one: “Do I matter?”. Of course, millions of other people, if asked, would likely say the same. It’s really one of two short questions that have plagued humanity since the beginning of time. The other is: “What’s the point?”.

The problem with short questions, is that they nearly always require long answers. Or maybe it’s that short questions are merely abbreviations for the real ones: Have I mattered to my kids? To my wife? To my community? Have I been a good man? Employee? Boss? Brother? Friend? Son? If I spend several decades eating, drinking, sleeping, working, and attending the occasional cocktail party or football game, will my life have had a point?

But then those longer questions become longer still. They require us to define what it actually means to “matter”. To define what a “point” is, and to determine whether we’d know it if we saw it. And that’s where things go pear-shaped. Leaving the questions to just three words allows us to remain in the comfortable realm of vague generalities. We usually answer them with two-word responses: “Hope so”. “Don’t know”. “Good question”. More than that, and we’ve stepped into the uncomfortable. Possibly the unanswerable. And so the questions become the answers. There’s no point to asking them. They don’t matter.

A few years ago, I had the chance to travel to a meeting in Dallas with my friend Dan. The purpose of the meeting was to visit with a small group of some of the last surviving paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division, who jumped into Normandy, France during the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two. If you’ve had the good fortune to watch the “Band of Brothers” television series, you’ve seen some of the history of these very men. Their stories were invariably shocking, by any measure. Young men - boys, really - bailing out of airplanes into the bitter cold, while anti-aircraft fire scorched the night sky around them, riddling the lumbering planes and the slow moving parachutes - and many of the soldiers hanging helplessly beneath them - with gaping holes.

Some who made it to the ground without succumbing to the assault, screamed in agony as legs and ankles were shattered from awkward landings, made worse by the hundred-pound packs of supplies and ammunition they carried on their backs. Many were scattered miles from the intended drop zone. Completely alone in a foreign country, those who weren’t immediately captured or shot, crept, stabbed, hid and lied their way through forests and villages. Survivors stumbled upon fragmented groups of other wide-eyed boys who were clawing their way through the same grim reality, and together, they fought their way back to American lines, or died trying.

These same soldiers fought in the winter nightmare that was the Battle of Bastogne. The forest around them was reduced to blinding chaos, as the relentless German shelling shattered eardrums, powdered vast swaths of earth and splintered trees into giant grenades. Sleep and warmth were distant memories of a different life for the men who endured the long nights of bombardment and savage days of combat.

To look into the eyes of these men, the same eyes that actually saw these terrible battles unfold, as they told their stories, was an experience I will never forget. Their sacrifice required them to face horrors that the vast majority of humanity will never know. And yet, of the many unimaginable stories told to me that day, it wasn’t one of rumbling tanks, screaming propellers, searing bullets, and unending gore and death that haunted me the most.

Quietly, and off to the side, listening intently as the old soldiers, one after another, took the microphone and accounted their memories, was a tall and obviously-well-heeled man, sitting with his lovely and impeccably-dressed wife. His gold cufflinks shown smartly on the wrists of his white shirt, as they protruded precisely below the sleeves of his dark suit. His bright red tie highlighted a strong jaw, still evident, though now pocked and craggy from the weight of many years. His glinting dark eyes were calm and deliberate behind the steel frames of his glasses. He appeared to be in his 90’s, and sat at the table next to mine with a distinguished grace.

He sat quietly, scarcely moving, stoic except for an occasional tear I noticed welling in his eyes, as the words from the podium described human suffering and terror - words that for him, seemed to hold real meaning . He had a gravity about him, an unmistakeable air of quiet importance, that inspired me to introduce myself during a break. His name was Joseph, but he insisted I call him Joe. As all great men do, he welcomed my intrusion as if I were someone of merit, dedicating his attention to my every word, not considering for a minute that I didn’t have a single interesting thing to say. Between answering his earnest questions about me, I began to piece together his story.

And as a longtime fan of aviation, I was immediately fascinated. Joe was a C47 pilot in the Normandy invasion. He flew the very type of airplane out of which the paratroopers in the room had jumped some seventy years before. He didn’t know any of the men personally who were speaking that day, he said, but in terms of shared experience, he knew them all. He lived locally in Dallas, had heard secondhand about this meeting of the 101st, and decided to come. He wasn’t there to speak, and in fact I saw him say very few words outside of our conversation.

He told a story or two about D-day. About the fear and the chaos. I asked him how he learned to fly, about how long he was in Europe, about his missions. He was careful to tell me that he certainly didn’t consider any of his actions heroic: He was just a boy following orders - a sentiment shared and stated by every one of the veterans in the room that day.

But then he told me something that I simply couldn’t reconcile. He said for more than seven decades he had wrestled with guilt. Guilt, he said, over the fact that when those boys jumped out of the door of his airplane and into the darkness over France, he was able to stay up in the sky, where it was safe. Safe. Among the acrid smell of exploding flak, and the searing heat from the molten metal of burning airplanes. To be a combat transport pilot was, in reality, a task so dangerous that roughly eight percent of men with his job ever made it through the war. It was estimated the average lifespan of a combat pilot during the war equalled five missions. Five trips into the sky, but only four successful landings. On the next, you would likely hit the ground dead.

I listened in disbelief to this man - a man of whose experiences I was in unmitigated awe - as he said he hadn’t really been through what these other guys experienced. That it was everyone else who had made the sacrifices and braved the danger.

Having never walked in his footsteps, I can’t begin to plough the depths of emotion Joe felt about his time in the war. But I left my time with him with a newfound realization that, regardless of accomplishment, or personal sacrifice, or accolades or apparent heroism or wealth, we all continue to ask the same short questions. Joe clearly mattered to the men he flew safely. He mattered to his country. He mattered to everyone who enjoys their freedom today, all these years later. And yet, he wasn’t so sure.

And the fact that Joe - like the rest of us - wasn’t so sure he mattered, brings us automatically to the second short question: What’s the point?

If we can never really be sure we’re making a difference, then what’s the point of the struggle?

Since my time in Dallas among the veterans of the great war, I’ve thought of Joe often. And I slowly came to realize a truth: I’m only seeing half of the picture. According to Newton’s Third Law, for every action, there’s one on the other side of the ledger. Except that with regard to human understanding and emotion, there isn’t, always. But there needs to be. Force ceases to exist in a pure vacuum. There must be resistance - air or pavement or earth - to overcome, in order for it to be a force at all. And there must be a need to overcome that resistance, for the force to be created by someone or something. It must matter. It must have a point.

And likewise, human effort is not defined - it cannot matter - without resistance. It is not valued - it cannot have a point - without love.

There are always those in struggle. It is up to us to tell them it isn’t in vain. There are always those who inspire. It is up to us to tell them they lifted us. There are always those whose kindness pulls others up from the darkness. It is up to us to tell them how deeply we appreciate them.

We will all have our turn at the wheel, alternately struggling and reassuring, inspiring and being inspired, helping and thanking.

Bleeding and healing the wound.

These things matter.

And I think that’s the point.