3

It's Natural To Need To Feel Something When You Help People

There's a reason even non-douchebags prefer to give a grateful homeless guy a $20 bill than spend their time, say, lobbying for a more robust social welfare infrastructure. It's not just easier; it's instant gratification. We can pour out all our effort to combat injustice or suffering and not even move the needle for the country or the world. Pour out the same effort for an individual, and that individual life's needle can swing in a beautifully visible arc, like a starfish sailing through the air shouting "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes!" And we can feel guilty for needing to see that arc, because then aren't we just Donald Trump, trying to boost our poll numbers by clumsily lobbing paper towels at an utterly devastated hellscape?

I would say that's like feeling guilty for needing protein to live. Your body needs certain nutrients to move and not die of kwashiorkor, and your soul or psyche or whatever needs certain "nutrients" so it can keep doing good things. In my experience, the best cure for the crushing weight of "everything sucks" despair is allowing yourself to do the showy, self-indulgent good deeds (while also doing the big-picture stuff, like voting).

2

Putting A Human Face On The Needy Changes Everything

Remember when the "Muslim ban" came out? All those stories and images of families separated in airports?

I was mad and heartbroken and paralyzed, with no idea what to do. I gave some money to legal organizations trying to help, and it might have helped someone, but I don't know who and how much. I tweeted angrily about it, which was even more useless. I needed to do something that actually mattered. So I took an opportunity to work with my church and No One Left Behind. That organization helps Iraqis and Afghans who worked with the U.S. military, and in return got to immigrate to the USA ... and live below the poverty line. Our main goal was to keep one family from getting kicked out on the street.

This seems like a low bar, but it was incredibly hard. Poverty is a labyrinth that exits into a bigger, worse labyrinth. Yet despite the fact this family wasn't even affected by the Muslim ban, and certainly had nothing to do with police brutality or mass shootings or hurricanes, I found my level of hope/hopelessness about national issues was strongly tied to how well this family was doing. When they were having a good month, I'd be like, "We can beat this! Hashtag resist! Where can I donate? When can I vote?" When they had a setback, it'd be, "What's the point, we'll all be in camps next year, I'm going to play some bad video games and wait to die."

I knew it wasn't logical. Why should my attitude toward helping millions of people change at all depending on how three people are doing? But then you remember that for most of human history, doing a good deed meant helping someone you could see -- this concept of doing good for "the world" is brand-new. It's built into your wiring that when you give someone a coat, you get a little emotional reward every time you see them wearing it. You do not get that reward when you find out your taxes went to fund some sprawling bureaucracy that may or may not increase the number of coated people in the world.

1

Without That, You Can Wind Up In A Very Dark Place

How we collectively react to what happened in 2017 -- all of it -- will determine what the future will look like. Looking around, it seems like a lot of the social pressure pushes us toward inactivity in a lot of subtle ways. It can even sound like activism. ("Why bother giving a SANDWICH to A HOMELESS CHILD when the very act of BUYING THAT SANDWICH supports CAPITALISM?") You can wind up insisting on a standard that says anything other than a total overthrow of the system is futile virtue signaling.

For example, I always wanted to share my story above with other people outside the church group, but felt weirdly embarrassed doing it, like a celebrity going, "I'm so stressed out about this school for girls I just started in one of the poorest countries in Africa. I don't know if I'm changing enough lives!" Some of you probably have that reaction to me telling the story just now. ("Did you just call three struggling human beings your 'emotional reward' a few paragraphs ago? Isn't this whole article an excuse for you to boast about what a great person you are? Probably to cover for horrific crimes you commit behind closed doors?")

But I'll admit: I partly do it because of how it makes me feel, because I have found that when it comes to coping mechanisms, this blows everything else out of the water. And damn, are coping mechanisms important right now. When you see that creeping fire swallowing up everything that is good in the world, you either want to give up or lash out -- either through violence or indulging in confusing performance art and getting into a weird arms race with trolls.

Shia LaBeoufActually, what did happen to Shia LaBeouf?

Yes, it's still important to do the boring stuff, to go to city council meetings and circulate petitions to stop putting starfish bait on beaches or whatever is causing this weird problem, and to persist through years of frustrating inaction (the council is in the pocket of Big Starfish Bait). But it's also important to go out to the beach once in a while, pick up a starfish yourself, look it in its metaphorical non-Cronenbergian eyes, and hurl it magnificently into the ocean. For it, and for you.

That starfish story pales in comparison to what the rest of those "Chicken Soup For The Soul" books have. Check one out today.

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For more check out 4 People Who Really Are Making the World a Better Place and 6 Awesome Stories of Bystanders Becoming Heroes.

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