Making an impact

Day 168 / 366

I just finished reading “What you are looking for is in the Library”, and it's easily the most feel-good book I have read all year. It’s a Japanese slice-of-life book, and it covers the lives of normal people, the problems they face, and how a visit to a certain library helps them.

One theme from the book that stayed with me was that even if you are able to impact a single person’s life with your work, then it's all worth it. This really resonated with me, as someone who ever since college has been trying to find what’s my purpose in life.

I had long back realized that what I want to do is make an impact. To leave a mark on this world, something that stays long after I am gone. And this is why corporate life never suited me. When you have 1000s of people working in a company, it becomes impossible to see if the work you are doing is having an real impact or not. I don’t think JP Morgan would have been any different even if I had not worked there for 2 years.

I tried working in startups, thinking that with a smaller team, I would be able to make a bigger impact. But very few startups out there are actually aimed at making a change in the world. For most that I worked at, the primary goal was to make profits. So the impact I would have had would have been to make the founders of the startup richer. Not so fulfilling.

I think I have finally found my fix, and that is the joy I get from teaching. By training people, especially in person now, I feel like I am making an impact. For a lot of my interns, I got to give them their first-ever salary. I still remember my first paycheck, and how I gave all of it to my mom. So in this small way, I get to leave a mark in someone's life, and I find that really comforting.