Moreau FYE 
Professor Lassen 
Steven Wu 
March 2, 2022 

 
Discernment of a Goal: A Meditation and A Eulogy 

 
 It has now finally come to the moment of the end of my life when this eulogy would be 
revealed. I seldom imagined my life to be something to be summarized in a few short 
paragraphs, but I could at least attempt to sketch an outline of the values that have commanded 
me during the past years and my journey towards discovering and making them a center of my 
life. I take special pride in the fact that I have stayed true to that quest of reflection and let my 
experiences and learnings take me, wherever they have led. 
 
 I was a theorizer. It was soon after I started elementary school that I discovered my talent 
in the somewhat bureaucratic skills of creating documents and amending them. Interestingly, this 
proved to be a pattern that guided my life for the most part. Creating plans, breaking them, and 
creating new ones. Plans made me more comfortable, but not necessarily settled, as they would 
often change and take me to new places. I remember how I fell in love with Notre Dame, then 
decided to take a gap year, and then decided to leave her but keep a special place in my heart for 
her forever. There are deeply emotional elements of this that I cannot exactly detail or express to 
you, but I’m sure you all understand how it feels to see what you have planned fall apart in front 
of you. It is, however, a humbling and illuminating experience to realize that even the most fixed 
of things are not at all stable. Keeping my eyes focused on a purpose and always mindful of the 
direction I was going allowed me to lean on larger plans and life goals that truly mattered to me 
(“Meet the Nun” by Ruth Graham – Moreau FYE Week Three). 
 
 I was a goal-oriented person. Sure, my Catholic faith and my dedication to my career in 
public policy could qualify as major goals. But there were more abstract values that could turn 
out to be essential when situations demanded discernment. Just as Fr. Hesburgh, the president of 
my beloved university did, I did not always draw up rules to help me stick to the strict 
framework of my affiliations but adapted as situations evolved (“Hesburgh” by Jerry Barca and 
Christine O’Malley – Moreau FYE Week Two). A lot of times I appeared rebellious as to my 
tradition and as to my family plans, but the practice of setting goals for myself made sure that I 
was not rebelling for rebellion’s sake. Pursuing novel solutions did not compromise my values, 
but they did require that I have a good sense of what the “spirit of the law” truly was in the 
various hard decisions I had to make. Part of that decision came down to my career, where I had 
to truly weigh the possibilities of living in different nations, a religious vocation, and 
relationships. It is true that no career choice would ever suffice to be a “plan” in the sense that it 
would provide you with all the answers (“Navigating Your Career Journey” by Meruelo Center – 
Moreau FYE Week Four). But my experience choosing between different options led me to a 
deeper awareness, at the same time, of what my values meant in the real world. An episode I still 
remember had to do with me giving up theology as an academic career in favor of a more on-the-
ground position. It initially made me doubt whether I was being unfaithful to my calling and 
simply acting on impulse. I eventually came to the realization that there is a way to reconcile and 
integrate my beliefs and what made me happy. A vocation is not an independent variable but is 



deeply intertwined with other parts of our identities and experiences (“Discernment Conversation 
Activity” – Moreau FYE Week Five). 
 

I was a reflective person. I always enjoyed going to Mass, even before I fully understood 
its implications and converted to Catholicism. My theories and my goals ultimately derive from 
my habit of clearing out my brain, finding problems, and relating them to the larger orientation 
of my life. To insert those periods of reflection into my life made me conscious of occasional 
digressions and disruptions and gave me breathing room to bring it back in sync with the rest of 
my values (“Why we need to slow down our lives” by Pico Iyer – Moreau FYE Week One). 
Without my hours spent lying in the cemetery on campus, walking by St. Lawrence River, and 
hours listening and silently reflecting on the subway, my perseverance in my values probably 
would not have survived to the end of my life. Most of the learnings I explained in the previous 
chapters came from these moments. Whereas others preferred following the practice of 
mindfulness, I found a sweet spot in a combination of traveling, moving between places, and 
silence in church and at various places on campus (“Way to Practice Mindfulness” by McDonald 
Center – Moreau FYE Week Six). I must confess that for me, staying at home or with my family 
was not a particularly relaxing experience and I sought refuge alone. I ultimately came to a 
middle ground between the more traditional and solid elements of my family and relationships, 
and my itinerant and curious quests. 
 
 I was intentional in my relationships. That meant I made the effort to be conscious about 
how different relationships were taking me. If I simply went on without thinking, conversations 
could become monologues in some cases, where genuine dialogue is replaced by the two parties 
spitting words at each other without trying to understand (“Jurisdiction” by Fr. Gregory Boyle – 
Moreau FYE Week Seven). However, being intentional does not necessarily entail that I always 
had outcomes of particular relationships figured out beforehand. In fact, that had proved to be 
seriously counterproductive in many of my previous relationships. When I entered into dialogue 
with someone with a certain set of predetermined “script,” it almost invariably turned out badly. 
I grew to capture the random and spontaneous nature of relationships in tandem with the will to 
not compromise my values and express them clearly when I’m in one. In short, I did not attempt 
to control or manipulate the flow of relationships, but continually evaluated the relationships as 
they went and applied those learnings to my life decisions. 
 
 My life, of course, could not be contained in these short paragraphs, but these are the 
elements of my past years that have shaped them as a holistic fulfilled experience. I hope that 
this had been, at the very least, an interesting story that might lead you to think about your own 
values and aspirations. What do you want to be remembered as, and remembered for? Momento 
mori.