Is it possible you’re setting your threshold for meaningful change to high?

I have friends that have made it their life’s work to get their city to install more bike lanes. They’ve been pushing for a decade and the city has installed a few lanes in particularly dangerous places. They have likely saved a bikers life.

I have friends that volunteer at a crisis center and all they do is talk with people who need help. They aren’t making big changes but are positively impacting the lives of people around them.

There are so many meaningful ways to improve the world around you that don’t require you to have millions of dollars or to go into politics.

Yeah I think this is a problem with modern life. Our ancestors knew only of their surroundings and their tribe. Helping someone near you was obviously meaningful.

Now the scale that our minds grapple with is infinite: We know we’re a tiny part of an infinite universe, our tribe is billions of people.

My solution is focus. Reduce the scale of your concern to where you can have an impact. You can certainly have an impact on the people around you. If that doesn’t seem worthwhile, try to figure out why the people you’re close to matter so little to you.

> You can certainly have an impact on the people around you. If that doesn’t seem worthwhile, try to figure out why the people you’re close to matter so little to you

That is very well said; I appreciated reading it

> Reduce the scale of your concern to where you can have an impact.

Nice. That’s going in my quote collection.

> that don’t require you to have millions of dollars or to go into politics.

These sound like the same thing to me.

And if you dislike that, you can work on solving that! It doesn't take grand gestures. Start by reducing the level of plutocracy where you work, for example. People will remember what that feels like and bring it over to their political opinions.

Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta was once asked during an interview how did you manage to help so many people? Her reply was: "I just started with one person".

You don't need to look far to find someone who is hungry; sure many people on this orange site may not be hungry of food but I bet there are many who starved of love. It really doesn't take much to offer an ear to someone in this lonely day and age.

Perhaps it's part of my religious background but I personally find that if the foundation of one's life is based on material things, then one is in a constant state of unhappiness. I come from a country that is considered poor but Western standards, however looking back I realize that the West is wealthy yet poor at the same time. Most are just busy worshiping money, sex, status or power. It's like we forgot about our humanity.

So yes, you may not be able to change _the_ world but you can change _one_ world at a time.

Mother Teresa may not be the best example here.

Could you be more specific as to why? I'm sure you have a crunchy anecdote to share :-)

Mother Theresa has caused a lot of pain and suffering. She would get world class medical treatment, while people would be dying in severe pain in her hospice and she would tell them some bs about suffering making them great.

They also had poor sanitary practices at the hospices and would contract HIV.

She is very much NOT a saint.

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-dark-side-of-mot...

The thought of wealthy westerners sipping coffee and writing about the evils of an old lady is on par.

She basically did the bare minimum, and let people die in her places because suffering would make them see Jesus.

I would be careful about mentioning Mother Teresa to anyone from Indian subcontinent.

Nice comment. I am in my 50's and a sysadmin for a large corporation. I absolutely love helping people when I can. I am gifted so that I can give. When I'm gone it won't be long before I'm completely forgotten. That's the way it is. Anyone who is finding life too bleak would do well to seek professional help.

> When I'm gone it won't be long before I'm completely forgotten.

_Everyone_ will be completely forgotten. I think the obsession with "legacy" is a fools errand. Making a positive impact yo those around you, big or small, _for the sake of it_ is a more reasonable approach, IMO.

Even the most successful person will be forgotten[1] within a few generations.

1. Forgotten as a person, but possibly reduced to a name and a title without knowing eye color or personality.

I think we're the first generations where this won't be true actually. Micro-documenting your life and opinions, where overtly on Twitter, pseudo-anonymously here, or in emails and countless mobile photos and videos will add historical colour we can only dream of for past generations.

> I think we're the first generations where this won't be true actually

The jury is still out, but I wouldn't bet against entropy. Cloud companies do not yet have a clear guidance on what to do with data belonging to deceased users, but if that data is not profitable, it'll likely be deleted[1]. Phones and NAS devices will end up in the attic or landfill: sure programmer-archeologists of the future may encounter some with partially recoverable files, but most of the present day data will be lost.

1. I missed a payment to a SaaS provider by a week (I was traveling) and irrevocably lost data. When the payments stop due to infirmity or death, the data will be deleted.

Existential crisis with a dash of nihilism. I see you have already gained a number suggestions. It ends up being pretty simple for me when I feel this setting in. Focus on what I enjoy and cultivate deep hobbies. Gain new skills. Turn off the content consumption in your life unless it is making you a better person. Stay curious toward the endless wonder that exists on this planet. You can’t fix the world or other people.

I did sell a company and make a lot of money. Does not change much. Did not make me feel successful or somehow complete as a human being.

HN is a poor substitute for seeing a therapist. You are not alone and millions of people feel the way you do from time to time. If this problem feels “bigger” than you, find someone to talk to about it.

I think your definition of "meaningful" might need to be revisited. It seems it was forged from the perspective of a younger self whose understanding of what was likely or even possible was ungrounded.

You've now adjusted somewhat to the new reality but the sense of what would really be valuable is stuck in the past. It's ok to, and even necessary, to adjust your sense of what's valuable and meaningful. Yes, you probably won't make world scale changes, but that doesn't mean the more ordinary things one can do to serve others is meaningless. It's just different meaning.

There's a book, Ordinary by Michael Horton, the first two chapters of which were instrumental in helping me make a transition like this. That book is coming from a Christian worldview so some will object to that perspective. Unfortunately I don't know of anything like it from a secular perspective that I could recommend.

I had a similar feeling of pointlessness. For me I realized that that feeling stemmed from viewing myself as powerless and small in the face of the complexity and chaos of the world. How could I possibly make any meaningful change from where I am?

I came to believe that everyone is in that same boat. Those we look up to as having made "meaningful" change were just the right people in the right place and time and had relatively little control over that destiny. That probably won't be me or you, but it definitely won't happen to someone that starves to death, dies from a preventable illness or is just fighting to survive each day. So, I came to believe that the greatest leverage I have for making change in the world is to remove barriers for as many other people as possible and just increase the pool of people that might be the right person in the right place and time to solve the really big problems we all face.

Furthermore, spreading the idea that helping others is the best way to help the world can leverage a network effect. You might help the person that helps the person that is then able to solve a really big problem.

You might not have the power to change society or the world, as a whole. But you definitely can impact individuals. If you volunteer as a tutor for kids with learning disabilities for instance, I’m pretty sure you’ll make an impact on that individual.

You're focusing too much on the macro and "the universe". You live one life; enjoy it and help others to be able to enjoy theirs too. Yeah, everything is pointless if you view your life through a cosmic lens. Is it pointless for the ant or bee to exist and work for its colony?

I teach kids this, "you might not be able to make the whole world better, but you can make your neighbors life better."

I also heard something like, "everybody wants to help the world, nobody wants to help mom do dishes."

Enjoy the little things and do what you can to make the people around you a little happier. That's the secret to a good life.

> meaningful change

Says who? The tad bit of encouragement you give a younger person could change the entire direction of their life, and you may never hear about it. We don't get to know all the ways we influence others.

Remember to factor in a stint of isolation if you were in any form of lockdown

Don’t forget to give your social batteries a jump start if needed before evaluating long term goals. It’s hard to care when you’ve not had your quota of social interaction filled in a while. Caring about stuff is a positive side effect of ego, and ego needs social interaction for fuel (I might be talking nonsense here biologically, pinch of salt)

Whether this is relevant or not I wish you the best in finding the thing that clicks

Others have said it but I'll say it again. You need to recalibrate what you think of as meaningful change.

Contrary to popular belief, history was never written by great men.

You might associate a few individuals with the great movements of history, but the people you know by name only echoed the popular opinion of their time.

The real wheels of history inch forward when common people influence their neighbours and children to strive for something a little better than the status quo.

Do something. Take the smallest step that is recognisably in the direction you want society to go.

Try posting answers on stackoverflow. Ideally, not the low hanging fruit that takes 5 seconds to solve but the difficult questions most seem to avoid.