How to give back?
Focus and attention are invaluable and increasingly get lost in an ever-growing amount of news and reporting to digest and information to acknowledge. The more I read, the more I yearn for more actionable thoughts and less consuming. I feel like I do not give enough of what I know (by having read and experienced; still not much at all compared to masters of their game though, as I am still young and very inexperienced in all but some areas) back to the world.
But how to give back? How to enrich the world with value? I do not want to add to the amount of nonsense and superfluous things already out there.
What it ultimately comes down to, is feeling obliged to thank the world for granting me existence in a time of prosperity and providing me with endless opportunities. I have thought about how to give back and how to provide value to the world and its inhabitants for years.
Still, I am no wiser.
Nonetheless, I consider two steps vital to figuring out how to give back:
Keep training my discipline of perception
The doctrine of the three “disciplines” is central to Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.
Gregory Hays writes in his introduction to his translation of Meditations:
“The discipline of perception requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought: that we see things dispassionately for what they are. (…)
It is, in other words, not objects and events but the interpretations we place on them that are the problem. Our duty is therefore to exercise stringent control over the faculty of perception, with the aim of protecting our mind from error.”
For me it’s is all about differentiating between face-value and the deeper meaning of things. I still have a lot to learn here but hope to gain sufficient ability in it which hopefully will enable me to identify possibilities to further mankind’s good.
Start acting on my knowledge
“Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.” Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 6.51
My well-being depends on what I do. If you have been training your whole life to sincerely give back, there will be a time where you are called upon to do so.
I consider that time to start now.
Honestly, I am still not any wiser how to give back. I know, though, that it all comes down to what I do. If I focus on that, I will not get lost.
