Yesterday, I wrote an article, where Jordan Peterson spoke to Harvard students. Another question which he got asked was. “What should we do, after we graduate?” Here is his brilliant response:
Stop unnecessary suffering. That is your calling. If you graduate articulated and powerful, there will be people giving you so many opportunities, you wont even be able to keep up with them.
I worked with many hyper competent people across multiple domains in my life and I can tell some very interesting things about hyper competent people.
Firstly, they are not selfish and they are not greedy. One of the great pleasures of their life is to find people who have the capacity to also be hyper competent and to open doors for them as rapidly as they possibly can be opened. They delight in that. If you are accomplished person there is very few things that are more meaningful that to find people, who have the possibility to be accomplished and say: “Hey look, here is an opportunity for you. Go out there man and kill it.” Then they go out there and kill it and you think: “Right on man… Here is another opportunity!” They go out there and nail that one too!
But we think that these people are holding their wealth and don’t want to share it with anyone. That is absolute complete rubbish.
The world is always desperately short of people who can think and speak.
The highest faculty of human being is articulated speech. It is divine faculty and there is nothing more powerful that that. There is nothing to be even in the same league.
Put yourself together. That is what everybody wants. It is also what you want. You know it. It’s what women wants from men. It’s what men wants from women. It’s like to be who you could be.
Go out there and fix things up. There are lot’s of things which needs to be fixed up. And what you want to do is to burden yourself with so much responsibility, that you can barely stand. And then you would be stronger trying to lift it up. And you won’t be asking, what should I do with my life, or what is the meaning of life or any of that. It will be self evident.
At minimum you can say: There is more suffering in the world that it should be and I can probably do something about that. And you can do something about that. So go and do something about that! And then there would be less suffering in the world. And then when you are 80 you can look back at your life and say: Well, there is less suffering in the world, then there would have been if I wont existing.
You don’t even have to have sense of ultimate destiny or any theistic belief to regard that as positive good.
Bill Gates is a great example. That guy is after 5 major diseases at the same time. He is trying to wipe out polio he is trying to wipe out malaria…
Well, what should you do with your life? Take a look at Bill Gates and see if you can do something like that. That would be good.
Thanks for reading.
Last two articles were my notes from video below. I highly encourage you to watch it and to listen carefully.
