SA¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½

‘The world doesn’t need my comprehension to be beautiful’

A few years ago, Andrew Ishak and his friend Blake were cycling through Copenhagen when they found themselves, unexpectedly, standing at the grave of Søren Kierkegaard. Ishak didn’t know much about the philosopher at the time, but the encounter made him curious enough to start reading his work.

He found a passage that has stayed with him since: that life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards—and that at any given moment, it cannot be fully understood, because there is no moment where time stops completely.

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.

So when he was asked to participate in SA¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½’s quarterly “Search for What Matters” speaker series, Ishak prepared for months with a level of introspection that would’ve made Kierkegaard proud. He combed through a decade of student evaluations for hidden clues about his soul, conducted a “rigorous analysis” of his Spotify listening habits, and rewatched “Forrest Gump.”

Then, as he finally took the stage earlier this year, he shared his honest answer to the question: “What matters to me?”

“I really wish I had a clear answer for you,” Ishak said. “But the truth is, I don’t. At least not yet. The best answer I can give you is: I’m still searching.”

What followed was not an evasion but an exploration—instead of one certain answer, he offered 10 “best guesses” 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.

1. Einstein’s theory of relativity

Ishak does not understand Einstein’s theory of relativity. He has tried—YouTube videos, PBS specials, books—and the concept of time dilation has remained stubbornly opaque. He chose a college major specifically to avoid taking physics. He also doesn’t understand how Wi-Fi works, or how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, or, as Insane Clown Posse put it, “magnets—how do they work?”

But this guess is more about wonder, not physics.

“I enjoy the wonder that comes from living in that mystery,” he said. “It’s incredibly freeing to know that the world doesn’t need my comprehension to be beautiful.”

2. Bananas

Ishak comes from what he calls “a fruit family.” His house is always full of it. He has ranked his top thirty-five fruits.

His wife, Heather? Not a fruit fan.

And yet, after a decade of family road trips to Southern California, Heather has gotten used to Ishak’s 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’re not eaten… the smell becomes even more unavoidable.

So, Heather chose to lean in, and now even travels in a banana-print shirt.

The banana, Ishak explained, has come to stand for something larger: the things we didn’t choose but that are somehow good for us anyway.

“I never want a banana,” he said. “But every time I have one, it’s great. So, I’m really intrigued by the things that God puts in my life that I didn’t ask for and wouldn’t choose, but are good for me and are things I ultimately enjoy.”

3. Falling in the toilet at preschool

This is his earliest memory. He didn’t 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.

The real question underneath the story is this: would you want to have the best experience of your life—pure pleasure, no pain—if you knew you’d have no memory of it afterward? For Ishak, the answer is no.

“The point of an experience is not just the pleasure of living it,” he said. “I want the inside jokes. I want to tell stories at dinner with family for the next 30 years.”

He often thinks of his Uncle Samy, who died a couple of years ago.

“Every time I tell a story about him, I feel like that memory brings him right into the present moment with me.”

Memory, he suggested, is how the people we love stay with us after they’re gone. Maybe life is about collecting moments we can keep sharing.

4. Not writing academic articles

During his talk, Ishak pulled out the old VHS camera his parents gave him before college—the one he used to make goofy short films with his friends. In graduate school, a professor told him he’d 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.

Then his department chair at SA¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½, Mike Whalen, mentioned, cheerfully, that creative work was not only allowed but encouraged.

“That opened a door for me,” Ishak said.

In 2018, he committed to making 52 short films in a year—one per week—and 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 “The Office” set in an academic department.

For Ishak, creativity means taking something overlooked—a priest’s daily life, a professor’s cluttered office—and framing it so others can see its wonder.

“Creating is challenging yourself to share with others something that they might see the remarkable beauty in.”

5. Buying shoes

Ishak owns a lot of shoes, especially for the many different sports he plays. He has tennis shoes, indoor soccer shoes, golf shoes—and a whopping nine pairs of basketball shoes. (Now ten, he confesses, since his Search for What Matters talk took place.)

But for Ishak, what matters isn’t being a sneakerhead; it’s why he buys these shoes. It’s 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… chills pulsing up and down his spine.

“There’s something sublime about playing or working together in a way that dissolves your own ego,” Ishak said.

He finds it in sports, choir, dancing in the kitchen, or singing Silent Night in a candlelit church on Christmas Eve.

“When you stop being individuals and start to be part of a shared experience that goes beyond self, it feels like nothing else is better.”

6. Love and gratitude

“I don’t need to explain these, do I? This is probably the answer,” he said, followed by a quote from “Forrest Gump:” “And that’s all I have to say about that.”

7. Time

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—the one resource that billionaires are desperately trying to buy more of. And what we spend it on reveals what we actually believe matters.

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—“I’m going to give you my time because you matter to me”—has become a radical act.

“The more time I spend with people I love,” he said, “the richer I am.”

8. Smoking

Not cigarettes, he clarified quickly, although the smell of cigarette smoke does unlock sensory memories from cafes in Egypt and train stations in France.

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’s view of the sacraments, Ishak sees smoke as making an invisible grace momentarily visible.

“I am seeking to understand,” Ishak said. “I want to understand as best as I can, and symbols like smoke help me get a little bit closer. It takes something that’s supernatural, mystical, and beyond human comprehension, and frames it in the five senses.”

9. Question marks

His wife confirmed it: he asks too many questions. He’s curious about everything—what his daughter was thinking when she painted something a certain way, his son’s strategy in building an aquarium, what Gen Z slang his students are using, what a stranger on a train finds meaningful about their city.

At its core, he said, this curiosity is not intellectual restlessness but something closer to care.

“I care about your passions, your motives, your ideas, your perspectives.”

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: “What matters to you—and why? Learning about the people in my life, to me, is so much more important.”

10. Buying plane tickets in February

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.

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.

“Whatever gets me up in the morning is what matters to me,” Ishak said. “And I like that it’s not the same thing every day.”