Whenever I try to do something good, I immediately find myself facing two contradictory thoughts:
Wow, look what a good person I am! I'm such a [hero/martyr/champion of justice] for [reading a few pages of a book about race/ donating $5 to AMF / taking a slightly shorter shower #climatechange #staywoke] and everybody should be impressed by me!
AHHHHHHH the problem is so big and so many people are doing more than me there's no way I'm doing enough this isn't even going to make a dent ahhhhhhhhh
Sometimes I feel like thought #1 is selfish and thought #2 is good because it's more humble. Sometimes I feel like thought #2 is paralyzing and thought #1 is good because it encourages me to do more.
The reality, as is obvious when you type up your thoughts instead of living inside them, is that both of these thoughts are ridiculous and unhelpful, and the proper way to feel is something more boring and nuanced like "I'm glad I did this because it was a good thing, but it's just a starting point and I still have a lot to learn."
(Or if you're from the "don't use the word 'but'" school of therapy, "I'm glad I did this, and I'm looking forwards to the many things I still have to learn.")
And yet, even though I know this, the next time I do something nice I'm still going to fall into the same dueling thought patterns because translating "things I abstractly know" into concrete changes in how I think is difficult for me. So I'm going to try something different.
Here are four entirely unrelated anecdotes, all of which I think reflect this pattern in some way. My hope is that writing and seeing them all together, with essentially the same core despite superficial differences, will make it easier to see the big picture instead of jumping to either paralysis or self-righteousness.
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I've been trying to exercise more during COVID, because volleyball is cancelled :( A few weeks ago, I could run half a mile without stopping and do about 10 pushups. Now I can run a mile and do about 25 pushups.
On any reasonable scale for people in my age and general activity level this is definitely nothing to brag about. But I'm happy for the improvement, even if I have a long ways to go!
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Sometimes I get annoyed by headlines like "Jeff Bezos donates $100,000,000 to American food banks" because they ignore the fact that he still has over $168,000,000,000 left. Like yes, donating money is definitely a good thing and I'm glad he did it, but surely any remotely generous person in his situation would donate at least $167,000,000,000 towards something selfless! Isn't it absolutely horrifying that someone would keep that kind of money to themselves?
I say all this from my 72-degree air-conditioned apartment, where each of my roommates and I have a separate bathroom.
I say all this as I get ready to eat a bowl of cereal -- not because I needed to, but because I'm wealthy enough to eat varied and exciting foods pretty much whenever I want to.
I say all this looking at my queen-sized bed covered with wonderfully comfy pillows and blankets.
I type all this on fast, reliable wi-fi that I can afford thanks to the salary I'm paid to do what I love, which is more than eight times the global median (even after adjusting for cost of living!)
I say all this wearing one of many, many sets of clothing I wear to worship a man who said that a person with two outfits should give one to the person with none.
In other words, I say all this as I live a life of undisputed luxury.
This doesn't mean my critique of Bezos is wrong--- on the contrary, I think his accumulation of wealth is evil in the most absolute sense of the word. But it does mean that when I give X% of my income to charity, I'm open to the same sort of critique from someone making $2 per day: I'm giving some money to feel good and make a big show about myself, but I'm still living a life of wealth and pleasure unprecedented for most of the history of the world.
I think this is the same as my pushups example. I'm glad I'm learning to become more sacrificially generous, and I think it's a good thing. But by the standards of the vast majority of the world's standard of living, I'm still spending unimaginable sums of money on myself, so I still have a lot to learn.
I don't have to be paralyzed by how far I still have to go, but I also shouldn't assume I've already reached perfection.
(Tangent: I feel weird when people describe things like taking a cold shower or living in the city (as opposed to the suburbs) as "asceticism" or "martyrdom" --- on one hand, yes, it's hard not to get everything you want. But on the other hand, I don't see how "living a life most people could only dream of" could possibly make you a martyr! This would be like if everyone I knew had never run at all, and they proclaimed me the king of fitness when I ran half a mile! Sure, maybe it would have been hard for me to unlearn my culture's refusal to work out, but a more accurate point of view would be that we were all super out of shape and needed to fix it.)
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It will be no surprise if you've followed this blog awhile that I struggle with suicidal thoughts. I've been slowly getting better at dealing with them, in a way that's difficult to quantify, but there's a noticeable difference between "regularly googling information on suicide methods" and "not doing that."
Sometimes I feel like this means I'm really good at not killing myself. Other times I remember that the vast majority of people are much better at not killing themselves without even trying, while other people have not killed themselves despite much more serious mental issues.
Again: not a world expert. Still room to improve. But something I can be glad for myself about.
(Another tangent: maybe this is the key nuance. I can be glad about things for myself, but when I start feeling like I'm great objectively for doing something, or feeling like I've made it and don't need to improve any more, that the problem comes.)
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I went on a date a few months ago with somebody who was (is?) dead-set on working as a missionary in Mexico. She had a lot of interesting thoughts, but the one that's stuck the most with me was the following (paraphrased):
"The problem with a lot of American missions organizations is they have a very American mindset. So they'll teach you to have a 40-hour workweek, and then to take a day of rest because rest is important. But at the same time, your church's members will be working 80 or 100-hour weeks for very low wages, and you'll be asking them to volunteer what little time they have left to help you with the stuff you didn't do because you were resting!"
I don't have a lot to add because I still don't know what the right takeaway is. But it feels like the same sort of thing: you give your 40-hour workweek and feel like you've done SO MUCH while everybody else is working constantly (and being relatively overlooked, as well.)