Following self-love and close relationships, my third pursuit for a purposeful, worthwhile, and joyful life is societal contributions. Before writing My Take on Life, I had a clear mental structure of what I wanted the first two sections to communicate.  It was a fun and reflective experience to give shape and articulation to my amorphous ideas of self-love and close relationships. Regarding societal contributions, I thought it would be simple to write about what it meant to be a contributing member of society. That was not the case.

Most people have an inherent sense of what being a good member of society looks like. It is easy to list the attributes of a good citizen: kindness, compassion, a sense of civic duty, respect, being neighborly, etc. Yet, every time I started writing and thought I had a seed of an answer, it grew incomplete and did not fully resonate with the message I wanted to convey. Often, I wrote about what societal contribution is not instead of what I believe it should be. Societal contribution is not our professional work, legacy, purpose in life, or identity. All these ideas play a role but fail to paint the complete picture. I want to write about what societal contribution is to me. I want to dig into our human role in a complex societal system.

What is our responsibility to the other life with whom we share our small time and space on this planet? My goal is not to characterize traits of a good individual in a human community but to unravel the responsibilities and necessary behaviors that human society requires. This question is fundamental to our existence, historically debated, and limitless in potential answers.

All questions on this scale are challenging to tackle in a way that produces tangible and actionable guidelines. Initially, this is why I struggled with this post. Luckily, there have lived before me countless more intelligent minds than my own who have wrestled with the same ideas throughout their lives. So, I will call on some past wisdom today to help me get started. Specifically, the old philosopher Emperor Marcus Aurelius and one of my favorite quotes:

“So you were born to feel nice? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?” – Marcus Aurelius

I love this passage. I think about it quite often. The last sentence alone resonates within me deep to my core. The word choice of “demands” adds an urgent tone of existential clarity. What does my nature demand of me? Why am I not running towards it? Am I so preoccupied with feeling nice that I forget my humanity? It is important to ask myself these questions and answer honestly. I am afraid. I am distracted. I am busy. I feel nice. In my fears and desires as a human being, I often forget that one of my purposes is to keep putting the world in order the best I can. With all the technology, ease of living, and privilege available to us in the 21^st century, I constantly feel tempted to reject this call. Yet every time I deny myself the opportunity to do things and experience them, I am rejecting the responsibilities of my humanity.

So, how do I instead embrace the responsibilities of my humanity and start contributing to society by putting the world in order? What I believe societal contribution fundamentally boils down to is creation. Human beings put the world in order by creating. Creation can be part of our professional work or not. But this is our responsibility to humanity and life. Regardless of the perceived value of effect, we must create. Is that not what truly separates us as humans from other life? We cannot pollinate like bees. We cannot harness solar energy as efficiently and abundantly as plants. Our unique ability is to consciously pull ideas out of nothingness and mold reality to our will. That is the job of humans. Thus, like a plant deprived of the sun that cannot do its job and dies, a human with no acts of creation will decay over time. It is antithetical to the human experience to say things are good enough and that the world should stay just as it is. We have a responsibility to our past, present, and posterity to foster and guide the evolution of humanity forward. Every generation, every day, one small step.

The responsibility to create is overwhelming. Sometimes, I feel the pressure of this call to action weighing me down, paralyzing any drive I have to act. But creation takes many forms, speeds, and sizes and is virtually limitless. Writing. Art. Teaching. Talking. Having children. Sparking new ideas. Growing plants. Building a house. Building a snowman. Building Legos. Building relationships. Growing food. Creating technology. There is no limit on how or what we can create. But this is the best and most human way I can contribute to society.

When I look back on my life thus far and ask what I have created, the answer is not much. I feel I ought to do more by any qualitative or quantitative measurement. I relive opportunities where I lacked the conviction and courageous spirit to exercise my human curiosity and creativity to its full potential. I should have built more, contributed more, loved more. Overwhelming as it is, this feeling of wanting to do more is part of being human and necessary. That is what our nature demands. That feeling is the call to be a human, and only we can answer it. I hope that feeling never goes away. Simultaneously, I also aspire to find peace and solace in my contributions. I am just one human creating. It is hard to remember that we are one small person, surrounded by seven billion others, all with a unique perspective and context to create. Everything we create changes the world. All I can do is live, love, and create until my heart stops thumping.

A natural by-product of answering the call to create as a human is a societal kinship and a perspective that eradicates selfish delusions and concerns. I do not ever want to get so self-obsessed to think that my life is a sole testament to the tenacity and spirit with which I live. My life is always an effort in concert with other lives. Someone else made the desk where I rest my arms. Someone else made the hardware and software for the laptop I type on. The building that keeps me warm was built by someone else so that I could be warm. What have I built today to help someone else live tomorrow? Have I contributed to another individual’s purpose, worth, and joy? Or am I content to bask in the contentment that life has granted me thus far and to feel nice? No – Do the work of a human.

To finish, I want to summarize all three pursuits together. Through self-love, I can find clarity about who I am. I can love, understand, and genuinely care for other people’s lives through my close relationships. When these first two pursuits are aligned, I am best poised to step out into the world’s chaos and ask more of myself. Through creating and building in society, I exercise my humanity. All three of these ideas are interconnected and do not exist independently. I often find inspiration and direction in how I want to create through practicing self-understanding and pouring energy into close relationships. And I believe we do our best creating, not in isolation but in collaborative efforts with others. To live a life of purpose, worth, and joy, I must find harmony and balance in all three pursuits: self-love, close relationships, and societal contributions. Everything else in life is just a distraction. The difficult task in life is separating the distractions from what is important and going all-in on the things that truly matter. As of February 3, 2025, that is my take on life.