It’s not the thought that counts

I am blessed with being in control of my own day. This also robs me of excuses when I waste one.

It is an interesting task to figure out what to do with your day when you don’t have 12 hours worth of predefined tasks. School doesn’t really teach us how to handle a day of free time.

As an adult you have holidays and you have normal days, it’s strange having a normal day as a holiday but also not a holiday.

One day I thought maybe I’d use my time for good. I would try to volunteer in my local community. That was a good day, so good in fact that I didn’t really feel much urgency to act on it. Just the willingness to help was enough for me to look myself in the mirror and see a faint halo glowing above my head.

I researched for a very long time what might be a good fit for me. I managed to justify doing nothing for months, my halo was beginning to fade. I felt less saintly by the day.

Eventually I signed up to help lonely elderly people and give them company. The idea of playing cards and chatting shit sounded adorable. My grandmother volunteers at elderly homes doing the same, and I always thought it would be nice to do that someday.

I had an interview with the group organising it, which was not in my native language so I was doubly impressed by both my talents and my generosity. I then went to an initial meeting thing and sat through a very long presentation with a group of 7 middle-aged women who were very confused at my presence.

Then they closed the program before I ever played a role and asked if I wanted to do something else. The other options sounded uninteresting, both my interest and halo faded.

they even gave me, unironically, a participation trophy (certificate)

We tell ourselves that it is the thought that counts, but a lot of the time the thought counts for fuck all. It let me look myself in the mirror and believe in my saintliness, but it didn’t really do anything tangible.

I will say that I had good intentions. If they had said ‘yo thanks for signing up, be here tomorrow’, I would have done just that. I would have likely developed the habit over time, and I’d still be volunteering on a regular basis today.

Adding friction to doing good is never wise. It still seems a touch unnecessary to sit through an interview and a seminar just to hang out with some old people.

While I do think I deserve a sliver of credit for trying, I also deserve the subtle look of shame for giving up. My effort was noble but my action worthless.

After this experience I turned to more difficult problems that I was never actually going to do anything about. Wars, AI, the general fears that the news would show me. I enjoyed learning about problems I couldn’t solve far more than I did trying to solve things I could.

We love to seek unsolvable problems in a world of solvable ones.

Even if you have all the time in the world, you still only have a limited amount of bandwidth, you only have so many fucks to give.

I’ve found that wilful and selective ignorance is a weapon that can be wielded to ensure that your fucks are distributed correctly.

After my own version of burnout, I logged off for most of last year. I missed out on a lot of headlines but was able to do a lot more good for the people in my life.

I became an objectively better person. I hosted dinners, I read books and I was always the guy to call if someone had a problem.

We often drown in a sense of awareness that we were never meant to have. I was never meant to be so aware of the suffering of the world.

Now you may ask—what is the difference between just avoiding things you don’t want to deal with, and selectively remaining ignorant? I think it comes down to something always being more than nothing.

By being too aware of the world’s problems we somehow convince ourselves that none are worth solving. Many self-identified intellectuals can tell tales of human suffering but not recount a time they’ve helped a stranger.

Volunteering at your local animal shelter is important, but the nihilist will point to a war on the other side of the world and say why bother with such frivolity. I would argue that the awareness of a war you can do nothing about is far more frivolous than a selfless act of good.

More information should lead to more good. We should see how much there is to change and feel inspired to change it. But what happens is we become overwhelmed by what needs to be done, and end up doing nothing.

Being aware of all the problems in the world makes you less helpful than only knowing of one. I know that I have a specific knowledge about a niche industry. In the scheme of the world, helping people find balance with wealth and financial markets seems really fucking unimportant.

But I am the self-aware nihilist intellectual, trying to do better.

I launched a podcast about a topic I think will help people. It’s niche and maybe my time would be more impactful if spent elsewhere, but it’s me doing something instead of justifying doing nothing.

I write because maybe, just maybe, someone will read it and have a better day. That makes it worth doing, rather than just thinking about.