Colleagues,

I’ve written about this so many times but I keep feeling the same tug, especially as AI and technology begins to rapidly distinguish itself as a real and omnipresent force in our world

Artificial intelligence is no longer a conversation about the future. It is the present tense. It is in our classrooms, our central offices, our planning documents, our inboxes. It can write, analyze, predict, generate, and replicate at a speed and scale that is genuinely staggering — and it is only accelerating.

One of my most popular (and most controversial) newsletters says it this way: We have 36 months to make it

I feel that same urgent tug more and more, especially the more I interact with you, my fellow educators and school leaders

Wherever I go, with every educator and school leader I talk to, here is a desire, a hunger, a deep need to be, well, human

To matter, to make connections, to not feel so isolated or alone

Most of the conversation I hear related to AI is focused on what AI will do to jobs, industries, and economies.

But I think the more important question is getting almost no air:

What happens to us — on the inside — when the world automates?

Not to our workflows. To our sense of self.

To the quiet, persistent human longing to matter, to connect, to make something of the one life we have been given.

I believe the most consequential disruption AI brings is not economic.

It is existential.

And I believe three irreducibly human needs will not just survive this era — they will become more urgent inside it.

Purpose. Connection. Meaning.

Not as motivational concepts. As survival-level necessities.

Let’s dive into each one shall we?

We are creatures of vocare. Vocation. From the Latin: to be called.

There is a world of difference between a job, a career, and a calling. A job is what you do for money. A career is a trajectory you manage. A calling is something that lays claim to you — that says: this is what you were made for.

Viktor Frankl didn't develop his theory of purpose in a university office. He developed it in Auschwitz — stripped of everything. And what he observed was this: the people who endured were not always the physically strongest. They were the ones who had something to live for. From that crucible came his life's defining conviction — that the primary human drive is not pleasure or power, but the will to meaning.

The research since has confirmed it across disciplines. A 14-year study tracking over 6,000 people found that a strong sense of purpose predicted significantly lower mortality risk — across all age groups. Purpose, it turns out, is not just psychologically stabilizing. It is biological. The purposeful life is literally healthier.

Amy Wrzesniewski at Yale found that the difference between experiencing work as a job, a career, or a calling has almost nothing to do with the work itself — and everything to do with the relationship to meaning you bring to it. Hospital cleaners who saw themselves as contributing to healing reported more fulfillment than surgeons who experienced their work as mere career advancement.

Meaning, therefore, is not in the task. It is in the orientation.

Which brings me to what I think is the real fear beneath all the AI anxiety:

What if AI takes over whatever sense of purpose I find in the work I have given my life to?

David Graeber documented what he called bullsh*t jobs — work that even the people doing it struggle to justify. The psychological impact was not mild. It produced anxiety, identity collapse, existential fatigue. Not because the work was hard. Because it felt like it didn't matter.

Barry Schwartz, in Why We Work, argues that work is not just how we earn — it is how we become.

Reclaiming our deep sense of purpose is critical as we navigate the uncertain waters of an era that can strip so many of our most basic tasks

Finding value in who we are and the work we do is an urgent calling we must heed

William James said it plainly: "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

Not the desire for success. Not the hunger for pleasure. The deepest principle. The one beneath all the others.

I have spent time sitting with educators and school leaders across the world. Extraordinary people — talented, driven, compassionate, selfless human beings who have given decades to work that matters enormously.

And when we get past the name tags, when we get into the real and the raw — they tell me the same thing, almost word for word:

I often feel so alone in this work.

One prominent school leader said something in a moment of genuine vulnerability that I have not been able to shake:

"You are the first person to make me feel seen in a very long time."

The science here is not subtle. John Cacioppo's research found that chronic loneliness carries a mortality risk comparable to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Robert Waldinger's Harvard Study of Adult Development — now spanning 85 years — found that the strongest predictor of a long, healthy life is not achievement or discipline. It is the warmth and quality of your relationships.

Perhaps this is why so many people are even turning to AI for companionship

We desperately need to be needed, to feel wanted, to have connection at any cost

In an automated era, when it is easier and easier to disappear behind screens, the hunger to be genuinely known by another human being is not going to diminish.

It is going to exponentially expand.

There is a question deep in the algorithm of the human experience:

What does my life mean?

Jonathan Gottschall writes that human beings do not experience life as data — we experience it as story.

We organize events into arcs, look for causes and consequences, insist that the chaos of experience has a shape. Jerome Bruner argued that narrative reasoning is the mode of thought that actually organizes identity. We do not live and then tell stories about our lives.

We live inside stories.

Which means the story you are telling yourself about who you are and where you are going is not decoration layered on top of your experience.

It is your experience.

Dan McAdams at Northwestern found that psychological health is not about having a happy story — it is about having a coherent one. People who constructed what he calls redemptive narratives — stories where difficulty led to growth, where suffering was not wasted — showed significantly higher resilience and wellbeing. Not because their lives were easier. Because their stories held.

Meaning making is not a philosophical exercise. It is a survival skill.

Some of what is coming is genuinely remarkable. These tools can free us from work that was never worthy of our full humanity — the repetitive, the mechanical, the soul-taxing weight.

But here is the question that I’m pursuing:

In a world that is becoming increasingly automated, are you becoming more human?

Are you living from purpose — or reacting to the noise?

Are you choosing connection — or letting efficiency quietly erode it?

Are you making meaning — or waiting for someone, or something, else to do it for you?

The difference maker in this era will not be the person with the best tools.

It will be the person who stayed irreplaceably, unapologetically, fully human.

If you're reading this thinking — this is exactly what I feel, what I need, what I crave, both personally and professionally — you are in the right place

I’ve been feeling it and hearing it from so many others that I am convinced now more than ever of the urgent need to create genuine, authentic, transparent, human community

That is what fuels the work I do both in the trenches of school leadership and with other educators and school leaders

I want to help foster connection, purpose, and meaning at a time when it seems to be slipping through our very fingers

If this resonates, if this somehow struck a chord, check out the work I do with school and school leaders helping them dial into their deepest purpose, connection, and meaning…then let’s chat

This newsletter is just the first step.

I am going to be opening up the Ireland Cohort Pilgrimage soon! You can learn more as we set dates for 2027.

Most importantly, thank you for being on this journey towards deeper and more authentic humanity with me. Together we can do something beautiful in the world

Blessings on the journey.

— Dr. Scott