This is the Way the World Ends: Reflections on Purpose
In 1925, T.S. Eliot wrote a poem – ‘The Hollow Men’ and the last lines are now famous and haunting:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
So famous that for some of you who have played Cards Against Humanity, the lines–big honor– even get a black card.
The lines have stuck with me for many years.
Last year, somewhere between being vaccinated and Omicron emerging, i.e. somewhere when we all got back slowly and surely to having some sort of social life, I went to a weekend-long retreat in Austin, Texas hosted by my friend Margie.
After a couple of days of workshops, reflection, connection with other attendees, and an awesome Mezcal ‘class’ (which did involve quite a bit of Mezcal sampling), I wrote in my journal the following, all in one go. I needed to get this out, somehow it felt like it was flowing out of me, perhaps a good summary of what was swirling in my head during the weekend or actually the last few months.
I re-read it recently, and still feel good about it, enough that I thought it would be worth sharing here:
This is how the world ends,
Not with a bang,
But when good people choose to do nothing against the injustice of this time.
When they do not stand up for what is right.
When they use their genius to optimize the profits of extractive companies
And exchange justice for convenience and potato chips.
When we give up.
What am I doing here?
What is my purpose?
How will I have a positive impact?
Why?
These are questions you should ask yourself every day.
And if you do not know the answers or if you have lost them,
You should never stop searching until you have one that makes you feel good when you look at yourself in the mirror.
We waste so much of our time, our energy and our life on bullshit.
On insecure men, who cannot love us right,
On material things that complicate our lives,
On making sense of the trauma our parents have inflicted on us,
On careers that make the world slowly but surely a little worse off.
Coming into one’s own is realizing that we have
The power to choose what we do with our waking hours,
The resilience to survive in a world optimized for the superficial,
The depth to search for the meaningful,
The genius and the empathy to work on and solve problems that actually matter for the most oppressed.
Go do good in the world because nothing else matters.
