If you haven’t seen, Bryan Johnson, the guy who made Blueprint and this longevity protocol (also the founder of Venmo), made the gushiest video about his girlfriend. Allegedly, they’ve been dating for the last few years and just decided to announce their genuine love this week.

Oh, and yes, it’s the same guy who just live-streamed his mushroom trip. We’re in a weird timeline, and nothing makes sense.

It matters

Are wellness, success, and self-improvement just decorations around the real hunger: to be loved and chosen?

Bryan Johnson’s video and X post are adorable. They clearly show a man allowing you into the side of him that is not the hyper bio-hacker he typically shows.

This side?

His little boy. The one who craves so deeply to be loved. The one not sure a good relationship exists. The one hurt from a previous marriage and a life in the Mormon Church (a cult, no wonder he’s doing cult like things now).

I don’t say this to out or belittle the guy, but I do say it because I truly wonder if all the stuff he does is really necessary if, at the end of the road, he found a good love. How simple, and not at all requiring a $4+ Million investment into “living forever”, to just find a partner who understood him. He fell in love with the only other woman who was doing the crazy protocol he’s on. Who else would be the best person to understand, care for, and see him?

For all the money and the wild measuring of every possible thing that can be measured, the guy just wants to be loved by someone, and I think we should take that for how profound it is.

That core longing never goes away, and that core longing changes us when we have it. That core longing changes how we show up in the world, and when we express that love and tell other people about it, how youthful and vitalizing it is.

Could the key to longevity actually just be a loving, kind relationship?

I’d bet money on that.

Death in the community

Before you read on: this section mentions suicide, so please take care of yourself and pause if needed.

I’m gonna take a turn for a moment… because when we don’t have that love in our lives, at least enough of it, and protected by it, we get hate.

Bryan Johnson gets a lot of hate online. So does your average 11-year-old.

A boy in the community I’m living in just committed suicide. It’s devastating, and the community as a whole was asking why. There are 7000 people here. They feel the impact of a death, a child’s death, immensely.

I found out it's likely because of bullying he was experiencing either in school or online.

I knew one kid in high school who committed suicide, and he was a popular, attractive kid. That doesn’t protect you from bullying, but if you’ve ever been to public school, it’s sometimes the only armor you can get. I have no idea if he was bullied. My high school had about 5000 people. My boyfriend said his school was about 1000 kids, and he knew eight who had committed suicide. That’s huge.

Montana consistently has one of the highest suicide rates in the country.

I’m here, and I can’t tell you why. I’m not sure if it’s because of the long, cold months, alcoholism, or the community. It’s magnificent and beautiful here, and I feel God closely, speaking to me daily in the changes in the weather, how the mountains reach the sky, and how the animals are ample all around. God loves cows.

Having God close is the greatest protection against suicide. I believe that deeply. The Divine, and a relationship with it/Him, gives us the spiritual and mental protection we need to take on the evils of the world. Because there are evils around us every day.

We live in a world that is fallen. We live in a world that aches for restoration. Our hearts remember something like Eden — a place where love is effortless, and everything is made whole. But right now, we are in a weird time in history. Some days, it feels like the spiritual air is thin, like we are closer to a great unraveling than the peace we were promised. Some days it feels closer to Armageddon than Narnia.

And when I think about suicide — when someone feels so overwhelmed by despair that they believe leaving this world is the only escape — I can’t pretend that’s just a “mental health issue.” Of course, support and therapy matter. Of course, trauma matters. But only looking at suicide through a clinical lens misses something essential: there is a spiritual dimension to our suffering.

Accepting a spiritual life

There are forces that feed on hopelessness. There are shadows that whisper lies about our worth. Sometimes those whispers sound like our own voice — but they aren’t.

More and more, I’ve come to see that suicidal despair is not merely “a chemical imbalance” or “bad circumstances.” Those explanations may be part of the reality, but they are not the whole reality.

We are spiritual beings having a spiritual experience.

There are spiritual forces that want you to feel bad.

There are thoughts that enter like an ambush, and they are not our thoughts.

There are lies that speak in first-person, and they are not our voice.

There are whispers that say: You don’t matter. You’re alone. You should leave. And those whispers do not come from God.

To pretend we are only physical beings in a purely material universe is to walk into a battlefield blind.

To deny the spiritual dimension of life as not “rational” is dangerous.

Because if you don’t recognize you’re in a war, you’re already losing.

CS Lewis wrote about this. In the preface to The Screwtape Letters, he wrote:

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”

In other words, according to Lewis, either ignoring the spiritual realm entirely or obsessing over it are both mistakes.

We are spiritual beings in a spiritual world.

And your soul is a target precisely because it is valuable.

Protect the children

I live by the phrase, “and we do everything to protect the children”.

I believe we must protect each other, especially the children, with everything we have. Not just with better systems, but with spiritual vigilance. With love that refuses to look away. With light that doesn’t apologize for shining.

Every soul is worth fighting for. And if this is truly a spiritual war, then we need spiritual armor.

The simplest and most powerful form of that armor is truth spoken aloud. That’s why we pray, that’s why we SPEAK with God.

Darkness feeds on silence. It withers when confronted.

Here is a practice I use, and you can use it anytime the heaviness starts to creep in:

1. Put your hand over your heart. Feel your own warmth. You are here.

2. Breathe in and say: “I am loved.”

3. Breathe out and say: “I belong here.”

4. Then speak this out loud, even if you barely whisper:

   “Any voice that speaks despair over me is not from God. I reject it and ask anything that isn’t serving my highest good to leave me now. You are not welcome here.”

Every time you do this, you are refusing the lies, the negativity, the darkness that can overcome us—we are all susceptible to it. It’s a constant practice to step back into the truth: You are loved and worthy.

And if someone you love is struggling, and even if they’re not: speak these words on them. Be the shield they can borrow until they remember they have one.

Love is not passive. Love protects. And it might seem small, but it can have an impact in just a moment. And obviously, if you know someone, or might be someone, who needs help, please reach out. Please find someone. There is more support than you know.

Love,
Val

I’m writing almost every day. If you missed one or want to see what’s been written before, click below.