I’m thinking a lot about the need to do more work that provides meaningful service.
In recent years I’ve been redesigning my approach to work: reducing interactivity, creating in solitude, and amassing content without getting any feedback or showing it to anyone. This withdrawal is overall a positive, necessary, functional, and highly-desired thing for me, but it is definitely a huge challenge to not get ANY positive feedback on the things that matter most to me, especially as I’m still in a building phase where I have a lot of pieces, but no grand completed projects. It is hard to remember what I’m doing, and why.
While making money is definitely one rewarding and encouraging aspect, and having the freedom to do and learn whatever I want is extremely valuable, those things are not enough at the end of a human day to make me feel … I don’t know what the word is … A valuable contributing member of humanity? Worthy of the resources I consume/to keep living? I need to make more tangible contributions to other people’s well-being more frequently, anyway.
It is very important to be of service when you are not capable of being social. To *know* you contribute something positive. To be able to express love and provide care for others, essentially, in some meaningful way that makes a positive difference in people’s lives that is felt outside and independent of any “normal” ongoing social relationship, interactions, expectations, structures, or exchanges.
I think a lot about a prayer asking “take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help”. I think about where I’ve found help and solace the most – what I’ve turned to and practiced the most, and am most capable of providing help in turn to others, precisely because I myself have been in need of that help so badly.
Example: I’m thinking a lot about the creator of (The) Enchanted April, having just started reading it (and about “Elizabeth of the German Garden”) last night after enjoying the movie so so SO much for decades. The need for escape. The wonder of beauty. The immense generosity and abundance of love and magic we are capable of in our own unique ways, given some time and nourishment. Wisteria and sunshine.