Especially in Sweden, my home country for, in total, 20 years now, religion is a taboo concept. As I was raised as a strict Calvinist protestant in the Netherlands and had to work hard to break out of that world view, I am OK with that. But I can’t help wonder whether we threw out the baby with the bathwater. That by letting go of anything religious, we also removed all spirituality from our lives. A life without spirituality is focused on me, myself and I. In my view, and this is backed up by lots of psychology research, we do best if we put our lives in service of something larger than ourselves. Last century, we looked to replace religion with some “-isms”, such as communism (resulting in about 100 million deaths because it does not work) and fascism (20 million deaths because it doesn’t work either). This century, my feeling is that as a society we’re still trying to figure out how to develop a common belief system that works and doesn’t result in millions of people dying unnecessary deaths. However, as an individual, you get to choose your own religion or to find your own spirituality. And it’s better to be intentional about it as you are operating on a belief system no matter what and rather than being a knee-jerking automaton, it’s better to be aware of your beliefs and to pressure test these frequently to see if anything needs to change. So, as you’re reading this at the beginning of the weekend, what are you putting your life in service of?