{"id":825,"date":"2026-07-26T12:07:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=825"},"modified":"2026-07-26T12:07:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:07:46","slug":"how-do-you-know-if-youre-wasting-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=825","title":{"rendered":"How do you know if you\u2019re wasting your life?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Editor\u2019s note, July 26, 8 am ET: <\/strong>We\u2019re bringing you some of our best-loved Your Mileage May Vary columns while Sigal Samuel is on parental leave. The one below was originally published in December 2025.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Why it took so long to talk about perimenopause<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This unconventional advice column offers you a unique framework for thinking through moral dilemmas. It\u2019s based on value pluralism: the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. Submit your own question here.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I\u2019ve worked in communications for the past decade helping get important ideas out to the public. I\u2019m good at what I do, and I think it\u2019s useful, but I don\u2019t really feel like I\u2019m having a grand impact on the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Meanwhile, some of my friends have built their entire careers around the goal of having the biggest positive impact possible. They\u2019re busy pulling big levers \u2014 doing global health work that saves lives, shaping federal policy that protects the environment, etc. I feel like my contribution is tiny in comparison.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I know life\u2019s not a competition, but I grew up being told I was smart and had so much potential to change the world, and I worry I\u2019m not living up to that. On the other hand, I also value work-life balance and relationships and experiences outside of work. Should I consider switching careers to something more impactful? Do I need to have an extraordinary career, or is it okay to just do an average amount of good and live a small(ish) life?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Dear Impact-Minded,<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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How do you feel about the fact that you\u2019re going to die one day?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That might sound like a weird place to start, but I ask because I think fear of our mortality is what drives a lot of our modern quest for extraordinary careers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In fact, the American anthropologist Ernest Becker argued in his 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death<\/em>, that one of the main functions of culture is to offer effective ways to manage the terror of knowing that we\u2019re going to die and eventually be forgotten.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The prospect of absolute annihilation is so terror-inducing, Becker argues, that we come up with all sorts of ways to convince ourselves we can achieve immortality. In the pre-modern era, most people looked to religion for this. It promised us literal immortality, in the form of an eternal soul that could enjoy a happy afterlife in heaven or maybe a nice reincarnation here on Earth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the modern era, as religion\u2019s dominance waned, we\u2019ve had to come up with new types of \u201csymbolic immortality.\u201d That can come in the form of publishing an autobiography, being part of a great nation, or \u2014 especially popular starting in the 18th century \u2014 achieving social progress \u201cat scale.\u201d As the Industrial Revolution propelled globalization, and it became possible to think about affecting people halfway around the world, utilitarian philosophers argued that our actions are good to the extent that they create \u201cthe greatest happiness for the greatest number.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The idea that we could use our working lives to maximize the good gave people a new way to be extraordinary and thus achieve a lasting legacy \u2014 that is, a sense of immortality. By belonging to the grand project of social progress, we could live on well past our physical death.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On the one hand, the tacit promise is comforting. If we all chase these superlative lives, we can participate in the great forever! But on the other hand, it creates a crushing amount of pressure. There\u2019s a sense that you need to be engaged in a maximally heroic quest; otherwise, your life is basically meaningless.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Not everyone, however, sees things this way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For an alternative, consider Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux. Born in France in 1873, she only lived to the age of 24, and the last nine years of her life were spent cloistered in a convent. She was an extremely pious young woman who prioritized kindness. But she was acutely aware of her own imperfections and limitations. She didn\u2019t believe she was a great soul capable of great, heroic deeds. She definitely didn\u2019t think her vocation was to have a positive impact \u201cat scale.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Instead, she developed a very different approach to goodness, which she called her \u201cLittle Way.\u201d It wasn\u2019t about trying to reach a wide swath of people. It was about trying to go deep on little, daily actions, infusing every glance and word with the purest love.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When the other nuns in the convent annoyingly interrupted her with chit-chat while she was trying to write, she made sure \u201cto appear happy and especially to be so.\u201d When one made exasperating clicking noises during prayers, she worked so hard to conquer her irritability that she broke into a sweat. She made lots of sacrifices lovingly, and trusted that through that, she could achieve holiness \u2014 and, yes, eternal life.<\/p>\n

Read more We\u2019re beating heart disease<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se compared people to flowers. Although most people want to be a big, showy flower like a rose or lily, she wrote, she was content to be a little flower at the feet of Jesus:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose its springtide beauty, and the fields would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord\u2019s living garden. He has been pleased to create great Saints who may be compared to the lily and the rose, but He has also created lesser ones, who must be content to be daisies or simple violets flowering at His Feet.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se became known as the Little Flower. After she died of tuberculosis, her spiritual memoir grew famous. People fell in love with her theology of the Little Way, and she ended up being one of the most popular saints in Catholic history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I suspect she struck a chord with people because she offered them a strong counterpoint to the idea, which was gaining traction at the time, that it\u2019s not enough to do good \u2014 we have to do the most good possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But, personally, I\u2019m satisfied neither by the utilitarian perspective nor by Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se\u2019s perspective. Both are extremes: one says \u201cyou absolutely must do the most good,\u201d and the other says \u201cdon\u2019t even bother trying to help more people \u2014 just give the few people in your cloister the deepest love possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Yet, it\u2019s a feature of our modern life that the fortunate among us have the capacity to go both wide and<\/em> deep \u2014 to consider both scale and other dimensions of value. People who go all-in on just one of these tend to feel regret, whether it\u2019s the effective altruist who\u2019s so focused on helping at scale that he ignores everything else or the monk who spends decades in deep contemplation but doesn\u2019t do a thing to help others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So, when you consider your own potential, I\u2019d encourage you to consider the full picture. I don\u2019t think you should obsess over finding a career that\u2019ll allow you to do \u201cthe most good.\u201d But doing \u201cmore good\u201d? Sure! If you can find a job like that, why not?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But, as you look around to see whether there\u2019s a job where you could have a bigger positive impact, you have to be mindful of a few things. For one, there are many different kinds of \u201cgood,\u201d and you can\u2019t always run an apples-to-apples comparison between them. (Is your current job doing more or less good than, say, being a journalist or an educator? Hard to say.) Also, there\u2019s more to life than just \u201cdoing good\u201d \u2014 a life well lived includes reveling in other precious things, like art or relationships, so you don\u2019t want a job that\u2019ll bar you from that. Plus, you don\u2019t want a job that\u2019ll be unsustainable for your physical or mental wellbeing or that\u2019ll wreck your integrity by contravening other values you believe in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ultimately, what\u2019ll probably work best is settling on a career that lets you achieve a decent balance among multiple criteria: doing substantial good, allowing for a pluralistic enjoyment of all life\u2019s riches, feeling sustainable, and fitting with your values. (And after scanning the landscape, you just might find that the best career for you overall is the one you\u2019ve already got!)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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You\u2019ll notice that this doesn\u2019t sound as \u201cgrand\u201d as either the utilitarian recommendation or the Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se recommendation. But that\u2019s the point: Those are extreme visions of life, and if you ask me, they\u2019re not even really about life at all. They\u2019re about death and achieving a legacy that you think will earn you a kind of eternal life after death. The assumption is that you need to do something \u201cgrand\u201d in order to make your time on Earth not worthless.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s a radically different starting assumption available to you: What if life is just a gift, and the time you have on this mysterious, weird, wondrous Earth is inherently precious, even if it\u2019s temporary? When you get a gift \u2014 like, say, a box of candy \u2014 the point is not to try to make it last forever. The point is to appreciate the candy! To savor it yourself, and also savor the pleasure of sharing it with others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If we embrace this view, then we don\u2019t feel like we need to do something grand or extraordinary. Life<\/em> is extraordinary, and living it well means relishing all the goods it offers us \u2014 and extending those goods to other beings so they can relish them too. Not out of fear that we\u2019ll be worthless and forgettable otherwise, but simply because we realize we\u2019ve been given talents and resources and, feeling grateful for them, we naturally want to share those gifts with others.<\/p>\n

Read more An 86-year-old Congress member explains why he won\u2019t retire<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bonus: What I\u2019m reading<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
See More:<\/span><\/p>\n
    \n
  • Advice<\/li>\n
  • Careers<\/li>\n
  • Future Perfect<\/li>\n
  • Life<\/li>\n
  • Your Mileage May Vary<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    You were told you\u2019d change the world. 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