“But you could do so much more!”
I’ve lamented some version of this to my mum over the years, starting from the kitchen conversations of my childhood when she was preparing our family meals and I was sporadically attempting to help.
When I started being accelerated through school, well-meaning adults would comment that I must have gotten my “brains” from my dad (he’s a doctor). I would retort, “no, from my mum!”, and then add that she didn’t finish school, just to make clear my stance on external indicators of status.
Or at least my stance in that moment. It was clear to me already then that one of the dominant stories of society on high status was to earn a degree at a prestigious university and go on to make an impact in your chosen field, respected by your peers and acknowledged visibly through well-known prizes and influential positions. And as much as I like to think that I’ve charted my own path, following my own compass, I know that a large part of my résumé has been influenced – consciously or not – by that story.
I hated that people assumed my mum wasn’t the exceptional human whose gifts I profited from every day, simply because she didn’t have a degree. I would ask her what she dreamed of doing once we were out of her hands. She would reply that showing up every day in the way that she wanted to for the people she loved was enough for her. Which would lead to my lament above. And then to a discussion about the birth lottery, and the responsibility that the lucky have, to use their gifts for the betterment of society.
I count myself amongst the lucky. I’ve been driven for as long as I can remember by this narrative, that I need to maximise the use of the gifts I’ve been given, to make the world a better place. Intertwined with this is an unspoken, less noble, narrative. That doing so will earn me high status. That I will be seen as fulfilling my potential. That I will be, and be seen as, special.
My work these past few years has been to practise letting go of this prestige motivation. To quiet my ego. Often it feels like I’m going in circles.
Sometime last year a friend suggested taking a course together. As I investigated the work of Emily Esfahani Smith, the course instructor, I came across one of her articles that quoted from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, a book I’d not gotten round to reading. The quote struck a deep chord, and some weeks later, when I’d finished the book, I was able to appreciate it fully:
Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
I don’t have it all sorted out yet. But I think where I’ve gotten to for now is that this is part of moving from the paradigm of measurement to one of possibility. We are not more or less worthy depending on how much impact we have. What matters is that, at every stage, we do what we can, with what we have, where we are. This will look different from person to person. And it may look different as we journey through our lives.
I’m learning to focus on a humbler goal: to do one thing every day that makes life a little better for another person in some tangible way.
What’s one thing you can do today to make the life of someone else better?
