The economic value we bring to the world is heavily stressed from a young age. When we’re in first grade we’re already being asked what we want to do when we grow up, though we hardly have any idea what this even means. It’s not necessarily wrong to ask these questions, since you will be spending 12+ years getting “educated” so you can enter society, but the “what” is volatile and subject to change, and most of the advice we receive from our teachers likely won’t mean anything by the time it actually matters.
We’re told to “shoot for the stars”, and never give up on our “dreams”, but it’s not uncommon for people to build identities for themselves that they later realize they never actually wanted. Anybody who is even slightly skeptical of your plans is deemed a “hater”, and who doesn’t wants to go on to “prove the haters wrong”? But in fact there’s a healthy skepticism we should all have about whether our grandiose plans are viable. If I actually reach $300,000 in the next four years, there will be a few people I rib a bit, but I’m not going to construct some self-important martyrology about how I “overcame the haters”. Reaching that goal would make them wrong, perhaps, but how many people do you know who have saved $300,000 in just over five years? Healthy skepticism is not the same as derision.
I’m blending posts, sorry. I have half a dozen things I’d like to write.
Most people feel more attached and accomplished at jobs which have direct and immediate impacts on the world. Most of us want to believe that our work counts for something, but because modern economies are built by specialization, this is hard to feel. Taking Adam Smith’s pin manufacturing example, when you perform just one piece of an overall process, such as setting the pin head, it’s hard to feel you accomplish much in the world. Did you save anybody’s life? No. Did you make a lasting impact? No. But somebody really needed some pins, so they went to the store and bought them, and you played a role in those pins being on the shelf. You did, in fact, “make a difference”, and your value was manifest through the fact that somebody needed pins: congratulations! So, I kind of wonder if it isn’t just by hubris that humans are determined to make a bigger impact, as if they can’t stomach their own smallness in the eyes of the world and their ego compels them to achieve more. But I wouldn’t say that this is undeniably the case, because I know that feeling, and you probably know that feeling, too. We just want to feel that our work matters, and sometimes, no matter how much we’re paid, we feel lacking.
So on the one hand, you can tell the world to f*** off and just live exclusively for yourself. And on the other hand, you can dedicate your life to making a difference. Both have their pros and cons. I don’t think anybody’s personal free time is so incredibly important that they can’t dedicate a few hours here and there to helping others out. But there’s value in realizing that your time is yours, and nobody has a good reason to tell you what you should be doing with it. However, trying to make a positive difference in the world is a good thing, and most people feel great satisfaction doing so. But if you let the striving to fix other people consume you, you basically kill yourself in the process, and then nobody is better off.
I play a small role at my company. I occasionally write scripts that satisfy a specific need one or many of our clients have, and the general work I do fixing bugs and modifying existing functionality plays a role in improving our product, which allows our clients to do their job helping the public. It doesn’t feel like I’m making a difference, but my salary says otherwise. My company was willing to pay me upper-five figures to do these things, and our clients are willing to pay the company a whole lot of money for our product. They wouldn’t do that if they weren’t getting value out of it; therefore, I’m adding value to the world.
This doesn’t mean low-paid work doesn’t make a difference. It’s just that not all good things in this world generate economic value. I don’t believe it’s common for social workers to earn upper five figures, but they still help people and serve a critical role in society. But on that note, I reached a point in trying to study poverty, giving, and grace, that I had to realize I would probably make a terrible social worker. And yet, in missions and the church in general, there are all these books and messages and lectures basically preaching what is essentially social work at an individual scale. Several years ago, I realized this simply is not my thing, so I kindly stopped caring about it. There are people out there who are better at these little debates because they live their lives in the trenches, and it’s simply not worth my time trying to argue the minutia of the great big topic of “poverty”, which thus far has no incontrovertible solutions (but a whole lot of whiny socialists who haven’t studied enough of the past to realize how great modern life is, but I digress).
This is where I feel torn sometimes. There is a need across the world for immediate relief, and many of these missions and volunteer organizations help provide that relief. But you also see a lot of systemic poverty among the people volunteering in those programs. Not just the participants, but the volunteers! I don’t know how you can help others across the world when you can barely help yourself. I’m not trying to be cold, here, and I specifically know people called to this work, but some people in the world just need, say, accounting skills so they can get a decent job. But the accountants aren’t out there teaching accounting; the volunteers are out there begging for money, teaching theology, and serving meals. Which can be good. But what’s really needed are skills. What do you do with grant writing, theology, and serving meals? Teaching people to do the exact same thing, which is not self-sustaining. And you just get bazillions of these organizations. I’d rather just go overseas and teach programming so a few young guys can get established and provide for their families. None of this “let’s start our own non-profit” shit you see everywhere. (again, it’s not always wrong. SIGH. You can’t write anything in a blog without pissing people off)
Does your job make a difference? I don’t know. Does it need to? As much as I try to avoid the word “balance” because it’s frequently deployed by people who don’t want to put critical thought into things, balance is good. I don’t believe complete selfishness is healthy for anybody, and there’s no reason you can’t help others in the world. And this can take many forms: giving money, participating in once-a-year gift-giving campaigns like Operation Christmas Child, or a more dedicated long-term volunteer role. But you get to set your own boundaries. You have to. But I also don’t believe that obsession with making a difference is healthy, either, because this is so often driven by ego and the psychological dependence on feeling important or needed. Church-aholism is huge. Every church I’ve ever been to has had it’s share of churchaholics, who are constantly in church, participating in all of the programs, and for what reasons I can’t quite tell, except that they sort of get off on the busyness of it, the involvement, and perhaps the sense of making a difference. Extroverts maybe get a pass for some of that, but still. Probably the only people who get full passes are those who work in churches, whose job is kind of to, well, be involved in it. Kind of important.
So when I think about the hobbies I love that don’t make a difference, I have to reach the conclusion that enjoying those hobbies is okay. But even if I reached the point where those hobbies were my full-time job, I’d still be very capable of helping others in some way, if only I can escape the pressure to feel self-important for my contributions to the world in other ways. There’s no shortage of Christian books like Radical that are all about telling you that problems exist in the world because you didn’t dedicate yourself to the study of poverty. “IF ONLY everybody did what I said, all the problems in the world would be eliminated!” Probably not, or many people’s lives would be so wrecked from this endeavor that they wouldn’t be in a position to help anybody. And THEY would be the ones needing help! I also love how it’s always about other people needing us, as if we had all of our shit together. Sometimes WE ALL need help. Besides, there are guys in Nepal who could kick my ass at programming. What I can potentially bring to the table is the magical and rare ability to not need payment.
You don’t need to make a difference. But you probably can. If you want to make a difference, make sure you pick wisely how you want to do that, don’t launch into something that doesn’t work with your personality or your skills. And if you have a special calling in a certain area, go for it, but remember that if you’re lucky, you can solve one small part of a person’s problems. The very best of gifts can only hope to solve one problem really well. Don’t take on the responsibility for their whole life, that’s foolishness. Your job is to the answer the call, not to be some sort of savior.
That’s all for now.