Finding the Road Next Traveled By

The idea of a fork in the road implies there are only two choices…

I woke up at 4 am this past Friday in the middle of an existential crisis: what am I going to do with the rest of my life?

It’s not the first time. This is maybe my 15th or so. But this one feels different.

It’s been three years since I “stepped away” from full-time work, with a COVID hangover and a sense of exhaustion after 40 years without a break. My idea was to spend six months taking stock and figuring out the “next thing.” I walked and walked and got in better physical shape. I cleaned up some personal projects and did some volunteering. Then I started doing what I’ve done in the past, writing about things that I was inspired by or upset about. The idea was that writing this blog would give me the chance to identify what I cared about and believed in, until, magically, one day, I would hit upon the next next thing.

It hasn’t worked, or at least not as I’d imagined. I’ve written about dozens of issues I care about. It’s been interesting to me and has satisfied my curiosity. But none of the topics has turned into something I want to work on with the majority of my waking hours. When is that going to happen?

This book is inspiring.

The 4 am wakeup was generated at least in part by two pieces I’ve been thinking about. The first is a new book by Rutger Bregman called Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference. The second is a 2023 article in The Atlantic by David Brooks: “How America Got Mean.”

I recommend them both. Bregman’s book is a gutpunch on the critical importance of more of us putting more of our brains to work doing more to make the world a better place. Brooks’ article is a review of America’s slow descent over the past half century from a sense of shared purpose to selfishness. I saw myself in both pieces.

For at least 30 years of my work life, I convinced myself that a series of jobs I was doing were helping in some incremental way to build the world up. And, maybe not coincidentally, those 30 years coincided with the greatest growth in my spiritual life.

When I “stepped away” three years ago, I didn’t just leave the workplace; I left my long-time church in a spiritual huff. Since then I’ve been rudderless.

What both those pieces I’ve been reading point up is that there are a lot of people who sound a lot like me – lost in a vocational and spiritual maze. Brooks’ article highlights a timeseries of surveys of incoming American college students asking them their goals in life. In 1967, some 85% reported strong motivation to form a “meaningful philosophy of life.” By 2000, that number was less than half – 42%. By 2015, 82% of students said “wealth” was their primary life goal. Brooks traces this decline in large part to the retreat of organizations that formerly provide training in how to behave morally: schools, civic clubs, Boy and Girl Scouts, YMCA’s and, notably, organized religion. In the place of these institutions we have substituted a “privatized morality” that suggests there is no collective set of moral assumptions we share. Instead we say “you do you.”

And that has consequences. “We inhabit a society,” he writes, “in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein.”

Harvard graduates class of 2020. Of course people can choose where they want to work, but how awesome would it be if more of them — and us — worked on the world’s biggest problems? (Image from Harvard Crimson)

That change in priorities has huge consequences for our society, says Bergman. Rather than going to work in consulting or finance (as, he notes, 45% of Harvard graduates do), more of us need to be taking on the world’s biggest problems – an overheating climate, the cost of raising a pound of animal protein, our aging population, housing affordability, energy supply, the impacts of AI.

Amen. It would be way cool if we could invert our selfishness and revert to asking not what our country could do for us, but what we can do for our country (or our neighborhood, or the world)?

That’s what I am trying to figure out for the remainder of my life. What would it take for me to stop writing about problems and start doing something about them again?

I think maybe three things could help me – and maybe help others who’d like to take up Bergman’s challenge.

Better leaders – In the past America has occasionally found voices who could find words and live lives that called us to get beyond our selfishness, do more and do better. Those voices have historically not been politicians; instead think Billy Graham, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, Sister Helen Prejean, Bryan Stevenson. They nudge us, embarrass us, challenge us. I need to discover a set of modern voices I can listen to and learn from who show me how to move through this weird contemporary world.

Who is giving you moral courage these days?

Better groups – One of the biggest things I have missed since losing my church is the small groups that made it sing. What Bible study groups, Sunday School classes and project teams all had in common was not just the chance to be around nice people who would listen if you needed to talk about your fears and failings, but would inspire you to want to work harder. There is value in being part of other groups that meet regularly, but having a group with a common moral basis is special. Bergman is creating a virtual peer group called the “Moral Ambition Community.”

What groups are helping hold you accountable?

We don’t have to eat from the tree the algorithms push us to.

Better food – If I don’t intentionally intervene to change it, my algorithmic overseers serve me up a steady diet of bile. It comes in my news feed every morning – where the prevailing ethos is that it’s every man or woman for themselves in this world, that every transaction offers only win-lose possibilities, and if you aren’t taking everything you can, you’re a sucker or a loser. But I don’t have to drink from that trough. If I can find time to read other texts, I can imagine and maybe even act on the belief that there is good fruit available – love, not hate; service, not selfishness; kindness, not meanness; self-control, not id.

What are you reading for inspiration?

So that’s the syllabus for my short-term course of work – hanging out with better voices in more positive groups reading more positive thing. Honestly I don’t know if any of that will end up with my getting back to full-time work. It may be that this next phase of life will be more about becoming a better person than trying to do big things. But something’s gotta change.

Are any of you having the same struggles? How are you navigating through?

Notes:

Harvard graduate job path: https://features.thecrimson.com/2020/senior-survey/after-harvard/

Moral Ambition book: https://www.moralambition.org/book

In addition to the book, Bergman has a “School for Moral Ambition”: https://www.moralambition.org

Brooks article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/us-culture-moral-education-formation/674765/

Fruits of the spirit: https://bibleproject.com/articles/fruits-spirit-and-their-meanings-bible/