Tuesday, October 06, 2026

One Eight-Billionth

There are roughly eight billion people alive now.

That means it is your job to do roughly one eight-billionth of the work of mending the world.

To be on the safe side, I recommend you shoot for one eight-hundred-millionth of what it will take.

But your feeling that you ought to some how be doing all of the work, or a hundredth, or a thousandth of the work, is a category error, and self-defeating.

It arises out of desperation and leads only to despair. It is clearly impossible for you to fix a thousandth of the world, so that standard leads to abandoning the fight, or at to trudging and agony and secret hopelessness.

Instead consider: is this, all that I am doing, one eight-hundred-millionth of mending the world?

You might find you are closer to this standard than you think, and that might give you the energy and lightness of heart to take the next step.

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