I do try to contribute to making the world better.
I do this too, but I’ve found that the far more accessible and long reaching positive impacts are actions of little nudges from a slight negative state to a slight positive one. The mental visual I use is like a meteor is on a collision course with Earth, if you change its path ever so slightly when its far far away from Earth, you’ll avoid the catastrophe. The amount of effort and energy is tiny at that point, but the benefit is immeasurably large.
So what do these nudges look like? It could be as little as thanking someone for something they don’t expect to get thanked for. It could be being a customer and calling a manager over to compliment a worker’s efforts and make sure they get recognized. It could be stopping on the side of the road when someone is having car trouble. It could be seeing someone left some personal belonging when they left, and call out to them or chase after them to let them know, or even just turning in a valuable item to lost and found fully intact. Sometimes its just letting someone know that they’ve been heard or that they’re not alone, or that you appreciate that they exist in this world. None of these things require superpowers or immeasurable wealth. Its little nudges you can push the universe back toward the positive against all the negative going on today.
I’ve done good work to help queer and trans youth gain acceptance and defense, but my budget is one comma, sometimes not even that much, compared with the four commas of the machines running the federal government, cackling about our suffering, while they post pictures of alligators wearing hats.
I do this too, but I’ve found that the far more accessible and long reaching positive impacts are actions of little nudges from a slight negative state to a slight positive one. The mental visual I use is like a meteor is on a collision course with Earth, if you change its path ever so slightly when its far far away from Earth, you’ll avoid the catastrophe. The amount of effort and energy is tiny at that point, but the benefit is immeasurably large.
So what do these nudges look like? It could be as little as thanking someone for something they don’t expect to get thanked for. It could be being a customer and calling a manager over to compliment a worker’s efforts and make sure they get recognized. It could be stopping on the side of the road when someone is having car trouble. It could be seeing someone left some personal belonging when they left, and call out to them or chase after them to let them know, or even just turning in a valuable item to lost and found fully intact. Sometimes its just letting someone know that they’ve been heard or that they’re not alone, or that you appreciate that they exist in this world. None of these things require superpowers or immeasurable wealth. Its little nudges you can push the universe back toward the positive against all the negative going on today.
I’ve done good work to help queer and trans youth gain acceptance and defense, but my budget is one comma, sometimes not even that much, compared with the four commas of the machines running the federal government, cackling about our suffering, while they post pictures of alligators wearing hats.