Existential crisis

Talking to a friend the other day, he mentioned how sometimes his life felt pointless. Like what he did or didn't do wouldn't be important after he was gone. This struck a chord with me, as I think that it is a common feeling for a lot of people out there. This existential crisis is a symptom of the world we live in, where many of our jobs are trivial on the grander scale of things. Our society is so specialized that many of our jobs exist only to support a facet of modern life that is largely unnecessary. Take my current job for instance. I offer technical support for a point of sale software tailored to dry cleaners. Would things on a long term scale truly matter if suddenly dry cleaners didn't exist? Not really. If I wasn't here to do this job, would it really matter? Probably not in the grand scale. So how do you respond to this? What makes you get out of bed every morning?

I told him that was what made my work with Extra Life matter. My job is a means to an end. Because if I can make some child's pain a little less because they have somewhere to recover, that means I have impacted the world. Not in a big way, but in a way that I'm able to justify. It gives the struggles I have a little definition, and makes the hard times a bit easier to bear. The desire to be remembered is part of being a human, don't ignore it. Find something that makes your step a little lighter, that makes you stand a little straighter when you talk about. Be passionate about something.

One of my favorite quotes is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a great show if you've never watched it) - "The hardest thing in this world is living in it."