How much can ONE person really do?

**This post was originally written as a personal reflection; a way for me to deal with a lot of similar yet conflicting thoughts I've had in the last months and weeks (and years, really). It doesn't explain much about what we've been doing lately, so I'm sorry if it's a bit out of context. Let me know what you think!**

We all talk about changing the world. You get a cause and you follow some philosophies and advice from an expert who has data and crunched numbers to back up her argument, and you make a vow to give up something(s) or add an extra routine to your life.

But there’s always the question of: how much am I, as one person amongst 400 million Americans or 7 billion people, really making change?

This is a dangerous question. It invites the philosophy of “well, if I don’t make that much of a positive impact by giving up all these things, how much harm do I actually do by not changing those parts of my life?” Enter social apathy.

Is it vanity?

Some inherent need to be someone who did something? Do we all just want to be a household name? Well, if that’s the case, you can apparently achieve that goal by releasing a sex tape or shooting an entire school-full. Those acts will get you to your goal in the short-term in such a way that failure is far less likely than if you aspired to be the next Gandhi (I am in India, after all), who had more setbacks (and very public ones, at that) in his daily life than more people would be “comfortable” with in several lifetimes.

Then there’s the question: where do my responsibilities ultimately lie?

As a young adult who still has yet to enter the “real world” in full force, what am I actually responsible for? Primarily, in my view, I am responsible for my future. That’s a big word, but it contains education, safety, social connections, and general well-being. That is a pretty short and (mostly) manageable list, leaving room and energy for non-personal responsibilities like “ending world hunger” or “the environment” to be added to the list.

Now, when I consider myself 15-20 years down the line, I’m generally the same person (personality, aspirations, values, etc.) except that list of responsibilities will be overwhelmingly longer. Suddenly, my responsibilities can’t just be contained in a box labeled: “my future”. There will be several boxes added to the chart, with labels like, “my family’s future”, “my financials”, and “my employees’/ clients’ (families’) futures”. Of course, just like the original “my future” box, each of these boxes contains another list of responsibilities within. With all these added responsibilities, it becomes harder to include all those non-personal responsibilities in.

So, I wonder, is it the length of the “responsibilities” list that determines one’s answer to the main question: “what can I, as one person, really do?”

If my 35-year-old self were limited in the amount of work she can do for the non-personal causes, then, wouldn’t the answer lie in limiting the number of personal responsibilities to make room for others? If my responsibility to my clients and/or employees lies in keeping my job or progressing in my career, and that motive stems from my financial responsibilities that bolster the future of my family, then wouldn’t the root of the problem be my family? In other words, would I have a greater capacity for considering my responsibilities to others if I chose to not have a family?

This idea makes me (and my parents too, I imagine) very sad.

Having a family, although it would take away some of my capacity to personally make the changes I want to see in the world, would also give me the opportunity to instill the desire to make and see those changes in another generation, who would, in turn, hopefully pass that desire on again. I like this idea, EXCEPT: what if no one ever breaks that cycle to actually take the leap(s) to make those changes happen? Also, if I don’t make the effort now to see that the majority of my peers also value these potential changes, they won’t pass them on to their children, who won’t see the need to implement the changes that future visionaries will attempt, and we’re stuck again.

Well, if we’re gonna be stuck anyway, what’s the point in me suffering now or making my hypothetical children suffer? There’s also always the notion that, if I focus on the now and my own personal responsibilities for a while, I’ll eventually accrue enough capital—financial and social means—to potentially implement those other-oriented responsibilities I hold so dear today. The danger in this, of course, is that, although the end goal is a solution, chances are, I’ll be part of the problem for a while as a means to that end goal.

Let’s say, for example, I decided on “the environment” as my end goal responsibility. I could change my entire lifestyle to be more environmentally friendly and work for an environmental NGO to slowly model and implement change. Or, I could make more money at a different job and save a lot of money by living on Ramen, all to eventually save enough money to buy up the Amazon and save it from deforestation or water pollution, but at the same time, all the plastic and Styrofoam packaging from my Ramen noodles would be floating in Garbage Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Ramen here, of course, is a stand-in for all my materialistic pleasures.

Then there’s another option that’s been laid out in front of us recently: I could devote myself to a life of meditation and detachment from worldly pleasures and pains to achieve liberation; moksha, or nirvana. While these ideas make sense to me cognitively, I can’t help but think of this philosophy as a cop-out. Sure, the task or responsibility of saving humanity from its own evils in one lifetime is futile. I mean, from the Christian perspective, even God couldn’t achieve this in the last 2000 years because,  people keep messing the job up. But, just because the job can’t be completely finished doesn’t mean we just give up and wait for our next karmic incarnation to take care of it or for the time cycles to give way to a better epoch.

Wouldn’t I, at the end of my life, feel worse about not having done (almost) everything in my ability to improve the world I was brought into than not having attained liberation? The way I see it, if I perform my duty or dharma to improve the world in this lifetime, then, when I die, even if I am reborn in the Hindu/Jain cycle, I’ll have accumulated good karma (or so I’d like to think), so if my soul decides to attempt moksha, it’ll be in a better position to do so at that point.

Honestly, for coming from a collectivist culture, this whole liberation thing seems pretty selfish to me, but I guess you could say the reverse for modern/Western Christianity. Is that the point then, to reverse the effects or tendencies of one’s culture? If I am inclined to think of myself as part of a group, and act and think according to the needs and desires of that group, should I use spirituality to focus on the independent self? Inversely, are the group-focused missions of Western(ized) religions intended to counteract our cultures’ individualist propensities? What happens when an individualist-cultured person practices an “individualist” religion/spirituality, and vice-versa?

Clearly, some (few) people have been able to use the detachment ideals of these “Eastern” religions for positive social change. In a way, this makes sense, going back to my original responsibilities predicament: if I am able to detach myself from that huge long list of responsibilities that my 40-year-old self is bound to, might I then have the time and responsibilities-capacity to worry about the rest of the world again?

Well, from my current perspective, I know I couldn’t live with a self that didn’t aspire to improve the world—however that might happen, so I guess I start with that affirmation and go from there.

There are so many questions here that have no answers. I am happy to explore all the possible explanations and ruminations which are provided to me through all the philosophies and religions of the world, but the only time I might know the answers to the “what can I do?” question is when I look back on my decisions from today with 20/20 hindsight-vision. Just know, future me, that I’m trying my damnedest, albeit blindly!

**Appropriately, as I finished this reflection, the song “You Might Die Trying” by Dave Matthews Band came on shuffle. I've never really listened to the song before, and the first verse is particularly relevant:

“To change the world / Starts with one step /

However small / the first step is hardest of all /

Once you get your gait / you’ll be walkin’ tall /

You said you’d never dare / ‘Cuz you might die tryin”