A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:Hello everyone. I maybe have a somewhat different question. I was wondering what happens to people when they lose their passion towards wanting to do good, to help the society, and instead want to just earn as much money as possible, even if they end up doing not what they would love to do.A bit background why I have the question... I just graduated with a Bachelor's degree and am going to grad school. And I am not super young, soon to be 26 years old. A few years ago when I started school, I was thinking "Yea, I'll graduate and get a job". But then throughout the years, I met inspirational people among my professors, a few of my classmates.Those people inspired me that maybe just getting a job is not enough, maybe I can be better, maybe I can become someone who'll have a great impact on everyone else, make their lives better. So today I met up with a few of my friends (from a community college) who I haven't sat and had a quality talk for at least 2-3 years since we transferred to different universities. All of us are in math/science/engineering fields. The others either graduated this semester or are graduating next. So all of us are going somewhere either grad school or starting a job. Exciting times for everyone. But when we were talking about jobs, they all were mentioning the money aspect of the job and not that that's what they'd love to do or with the job they'll help other people. Especially when everyone is in STEM field. They would say "If you do this, you'll earn a lot of money", and when I would say I am not thinking about the money, I want to do something I love and if possible help others, that will be awesome, they were being sarcastic 'Yea, sure'. What struck me the most, one of those friends, who I used to be really close, was thinking the same way. But 3 years ago, he was one of the people who inspired me to look up and be better. We used to say better be a poor scientist and be famous, do good things, than be rich. He used to be passionate about what he wanted to do, and now he was just talking about money. And he actually asked me "How do you still have that spark to keep going? How do you keep it?"I understand in today's life money is very important, if you have money you can do a lot of things both for yourself and hopefully for others, but sad that it is changing the way my friends are seeing things. It made me feel that they are becoming more selfish.
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reader, mfj78  +, writes (27 June 2015):
HiWhy do some people lose the spark to be a good person, help others and be respected?Well I do want to start my response by saying its wonderful that you wish to help others and I am sure you would love to have a career in which you can be recognised, respected and known for making a big change in others lives and/or the wider world and that is a great thing indeed....But, with the greatest of respect, it is also a little naïve. There are those who make positive changes for the world around us: whether in the field of science, medicine, environmental or cultural fields. But, sadly, the harsh reality is that for every great scientist, philosopher, philanthropist or world changing chemist there are hundreds of thousands of others in the same fields struggling to either make needs meet or even get a job they qualified for.I am not saying give up, but I am saying that its one thing to say you want to do good, another to use that mentality to keep the wolf from the door into the long term when other responsibilities come into play and others; partners or children, become reliant on you for financial support. The people you say are inspirational are your professors and your fellow students. Nothing whatsoever wrong with that, but please bear in mind professors, lecturers, teachers, etc are paid to be inspirational rather than give students the harsh reality that will face many of them once they graduate. Its part of their job. Your fellow students may be an inspiration in that they have clear ideas, values or ideologies you admire and respect which is tremendous. But it is worth bearing in mind that most of them, sadly, once they go out into the real world of employment will find their passion can quickly become a means to an end - work is tough for everyone with a job, and hard to find for those that don't. That can drain the most enthusiastic persons desire for their chosen field. In my experience very few people I have met really enjoy or love their jobs, even those doing the kind of work they always wanted to do, because of the politics, problems and stresses that are a natural part of going to work. For many of us its hard to stay positive and think about being a world changer when your pension is being taken off you, redundancy hangs over you like a dark cloud and other non work aspects of life come into play such as relationship issues, decline in the health of our parents, money worries, etc. Those that do enjoy their job are usually volunteers or those working I the lowest paid jobs. They love what they do but it often comes at the cost of financial problems. Most of us, to varying degrees, do become more selfish as we get older. It simply the case that its one thing to PLAN your future and quite another to be actually living the REALITY of that future. Your friends are changing their mentality as their life changes, they develop into full blown adults and experience shapes them and brings them away from the idealistic, "the worlds my oyster" way of thinking. Being a carefree, responsibility-less student planning to take on the world is one thing, being just two or three years older and wiser is another. "We used to say better be a poor scientist and be famous, do good things, than be rich."Its easy to say its better to be a poor famous, well respected scientist rather than a rich one but as we take on responsibilities, or reconsider our priorities as we all do at your age, our NEED for making money takes over from wanting to be poor yet respected. A lot of us can be quite, for the want of a better word, self righteous when young. I know I was. As were my friends. We felt we were going to, collectively as an age group, take on the world and tackle its problems. Our generation would make the world a better place and we were keen to sign up to that. I guess that is true of most young people in any given point in history. We really believed it and now feel very differently. It's not that the spark went or that we failed in our ambition....rather we outgrew the idealistic view of the world beyond our studies we had at that point in our development. I used to enjoy doing community work, charity collecting, etc. But as i've aged I realize that I both don't have the time with so many other things going on in my life and need to focus on my own life, problems and finances which gives me less inclination to spend even more time and effort trying to help others. That may be blunt, or make me sound selfish but its how a lot of us become. I have a friend who loved helping homeless people. It was her dream to play a big part in eradicating homelessness in the UK. I respected her for that a lot but as she got older she started seeing a lot of the work she was doing was actually superficial and in many cases simply paid for someone else's drink or drug habit. A couple of bad experiences with some of the people she was their to help made her feel she was having it thrown back in her face. When younger she wouldn't have let it dampen her enthusiasm. But now she is a single parent to three children, lost her job and claiming benefits and not in the best of health now. Suddenly just providing for her children and keep herself active is difficult enough, making the challenge of making a significant different to the homeless is something she now feels was naïve and innocent. I hope that helps?Mark
A
female
reader, Lulule +, writes (27 June 2015):
I feel the same way as you. When I look at the motivation of others (particularly speaking of STEM fields, which is what I'm working in too), it makes me sad. This kind of existential sad that makes me question why I do any of the work I do. I agree with the other poster who said that these people never really had that kind of altruistic motivation to help in the fist place. I hear it all the time. A college student who can give you X, Y, and Z reasons for why they want to save the world, but can also tell you the salary trend and potential earnings for their chosen profession. It shouldn't be so easy to identify. The desire to help other is almost like a personality trait; you either have it or you don't, and when you do, it's difficult to put words to. I know for myself personally, I was raised thinking "do what you love, and the money will follow". I could care less about salary, but I do know that I love working with kids, I love biology, and I have always been interested in neurological diseases. So.. Neurologist is the goal for me. Right now, I'm very poor because I decided to devote my 20s to school rather than a real job.
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