One of my 7 Birthday Goals!

Goal Two: Be Useful!

I want us to commit to do one thing a day that’s useful. I see these news reports about “the masculinity crisis” and what I see is a lot of ships drifting in the wind. I see a lack of purpose and direction.

Experts talk about the different causes, and one is always the changing job market. Yes, the economy has changed fundamentally! Guess what? It will keep changing - it always has.

If you think you can hold on to the economy from years ago, I’d love to introduce you to some horse carriage repairmen, some fax machine salesmen, and that guy at Blockbuster who didn’t buy Netflix when he had the chance.

You can’t hold on to the past. What you can hold onto, though, is your usefulness. Your purpose. And that doesn’t just go for men who feel lost and out of place in a changing world. That goes for everyone. We can all benefit from knowing why we are here.

When I look at history, I see a lot of big economic shifts. But I don’t see this same problem with millions of people feeling lost and angry. I think the biggest difference is that now, people can fill their time with hundreds of hours of social media and entertainment that is designed to make them as pissed off as possible so they keep coming back. It sucks you into a cycle of outrage, and it never offers you hope or purpose or solutions. Those people on your screen aren’t interested in solving problems, because they don’t make money by solving problems. They make money from you being mad as hell. If you find yourself spending hours a day on your phone or television, turn it off for a while and try to find a purpose.

My dad always said “Be useful, Arnold.” When I was young, I listened, but it didn’t mean as much as it means now. 75 years of life has taught me that it means everything.

Once I realized that I got more joy from training Special Olympics athletes than raising trophies and enjoyed hanging out with kids at after-school programs more than walking red carpets, it all clicked.

Being useful gives all of us purpose. You can be useful at a job, but you can also be useful as a father, as a friend, as a mentor. You can even be useful by improving yourself, by reading a book that teaches you a new perspective or starting to hit the gym. But it doesn’t require any heavy lifting. You just have to be willing to ask yourself, “How can I help?” instead of “How can I hurt?”

Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. There will always be tragedies and disasters and injustices you can’t solve. But there will also always be little moments when you can do something - anything - to help.

This goes right along with the problems with social media I talked about. When I was growing up, we read the newspaper and we sometimes talked about it around the dinner table or at work. You didn’t get rewarded for complaining about news stories with likes and retweets. In fact, if you complained about the newspaper every day, most people would just avoid you. And if you carried around a newspaper that automatically updated every second and screamed at everyone about the latest story you saw, you probably would have been committed. Seriously, think about how crazy our newsfeeds would seem to anyone in the past. Today, everybody has a platform and a personal brand, and I think that is great, except… for most people, that means complaining. Seriously, go read your social media feed for 60 seconds and come back. How many of the posts were complaints about problems, and how many were solutions to problems?

It is easy to complain. Any idiot can highlight a problem. It is not easy to brainstorm, to learn, and to find solutions. Naturally, the vast majority of our social media experience is people taking the easy route. I’m asking you to try to add something to the conversation, to be curious, not judgmental, as Ted Lasso says . And if you are so pissed off you think all you can do is complain, maybe log off and go outside and try to be useful in the real world. Put down your phone and help somebody (or, maybe, help yourself).

I promise you that the first time you go a little bit out of your way to be useful, whether it’s helping someone with their groceries or reading to kids or sitting down to share a human conversation with a homeless person or helping stray animals or campaigning for a policy that matters to you or lifting a weight to start getting in shape so you’re here for your family longer, you’ll realize that this is the true joy of life. You’ll be addicted. You’ll have a purpose. You don’t need your usefulness to be a grand gesture, just do anything to help anyone and you’ll feel the bitterness you’re holding onto start melting away.

At the very least, you won’t have as much time to be pissed off.

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