Are You Useful?


Are you a healer? A teacher? Do we have to have a purpose/a usefulness to the world?

I keep running into the attitude that I *should* have as my focus in life to do some kind of good/to contribute to the world in some way.

Like this is the ONLY way to lead a meaningful life. Like this is the ONLY way that's *right*. Like working on my own healing has no meaning UNLESS it's only part of making me more able to help others.

I read this stuff and end up feeling ashamed of who I am.



Healing, teaching, etc. It all sounds nice. But, my life just doesn't seem to work that way.

When I want to do good, I become useless.

When I stop focusing on the world and start focusing on myself (my own healing, my own needs, my own desires), I seem to become more useful to the world.

It's starting to look like that's the way my life will always be. IOW, I won't reach a point where I'm all healed and ready to contribute. Instead, the contributing will just happen automatically by me focusing on myself.

I keep ending up on boards and in groups where the talk is about healing and loving as the only purpose in life. But, that doesn't work for me.

Don't get me wrong. Giving to the world seems like a wonderful idea and all that. But, .....



It seems that my life is more about learning to love and heal myself and to apply all the grandiose things to the personal. To learn to love the ugliness of the particular instead of just the inner beauty of all.

Am I making any sense? Does anyone else feel this way?



Afterthought:

I look around me and see all the other people, the ordinary, regular people. Is it WRONG to be ordinary? To focus on supporting yourself and your family? To go about your own business without devoting your entire life to bettering the rest of the world?