Self‑Help Essay on Choosing Causes and Personal Fulfillment

Before I start chaining myself to trees and saving the dart frogs, though, I should take my own advice: Do not become a cause snob. How can you help starving children in Africa when there are starving children in Los Angeles? How can you save the whales when homeless people are freezing to death? How does doing volunteer research on coral destruction help those people who need help now? Children, please. Everything out there needs help, so don’t get baited into “my cause can beat up your cause” arguments with no right answer. There are no qualitative or quantitative comparisons that make sense. The truth is this: Those thousands of lives you save could contribute to a famine that kills millions, or that one bush in Bolivia that you protect could hold the cure for cancer. The downstream effects are unknown. Do your best and hope for the best. If you’re improving the world—however you define that — consider your job well done. Service isn’t limited to saving lives or the environment either. It can also improve life. If you are a musician and put a smile on the faces of thousands or millions, I view that as service. If you are a mentor and change the life of one child for the better, the world has been improved. Improving the quality of life in the world is in no fashion inferior to adding more lives. Service is an attitude. Find the cause or vehicle that interests you most and make no apologies. => Q&A: QUESTIONS AND ACTIONS Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas. — PAULA POUNDSTONE The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive. — THICH NHAT HANH B ut I can’t just travel, learn languages, or fight for one cause for the rest of my life! Of course you can’t. That’s not my suggestion at all. These are just good “life hubs”—starting points that lead to opportunities and experiences that otherwise wouldn’t be found. There is no right answer to the question “What should I do with my life?” Forget “should” altogether. The next step—and that’s all it is—is pursuing something, it matters little what, that seems fun or rewarding. Don’t be in a rush to jump into a full-time long-term commitment. Take time to find something that calls to you, not just the first acceptable form of surrogate work. That calling will, in turn, lead you to something else. Here is a good sequence for getting started that dozens of NR have used with success. 1. Revisit ground zero: Do nothing. Before we can escape the goblins of the mind, we need to face them. Principal among them is speed addiction. It is hard to recalibrate your internal clock without taking a break from constant overstimulation. Travel and the impulse to see a million things can exacerbate this. Slowing down doesn’t mean accomplishing less; it means cutting out counterproductive distractions and the perception of being rushed. Consider attending a short silence retreat of 3-7 days during which HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013985