be useful

I guess my next goal will have to be something like “be more concrete and specific when you think about what your goals are.” Be useful. It’s a kind of overarching goal that goes with a philosophy of life that says we’re all here for each other. I do in fact believe that human happiness does derive from our social natures and the needs we all have. This exists in tension with a natural drive for each of us to free ourselves from need, including the need for one another. So two sides to the equation.

Be useful, and be free. That’s your yin and yang, your alpha and omega, your city and man. There are a million complications in trying to find the right balance, but that right balance, which goes by a hundred names in a hundred religions and systems… that’s what I think we are all looking for. We want to be useful and we want to be free.

i’m still a bit unsure of what it means to be useful.
there are the obvious acts of course-like serving a cause, literally helping someone out.
i suppose i do that in my own way, but i don’t feel it’s enough.
is love useful? is respect useful?
that is valid but i guess what it comes down to,
is that i could do more & want to & will.

I will have to think about this.

I am capable of being useful.

Maybe I can help my sister.

What’s my purpose in Marshall? Graduate. Oh baby yeah. It’s maddening at times—the sheer lack of anything of importance to do around here. Part of it’s my age and inexperience, I can’t do terribly much in the church because of those two, and what’s to do at school? Yeah I talk to people and such, but it’s almost always the same ol-same ol. I really think a lot of that is because it had been so long since we’ve been out of school and everybody was tired. Tomorrow, tomorrow, what’s in tomorrow?

How many people go through their lives without ever amounting to shit? Without ever leaving anything for people to remember them by? The people who make us wonder: “What is the meaning of life?” because it certainly doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose to it.

I don’t want to be one of those people. If I do anything at all with my life, it won’t be to “get more myspace friends,” or “lose 15lbs,” because, at the end of the day… who cares? If I do anything at all, it will simply be to leave my mark on the world. Somehow.