Musing: We All Need Cairns & Finding a Good Non-Profit Job

cairn (k̢rn) Рa mound of stones piled up as a memorial or to mark a boundary or path

Picture taken before we dropped down into the valley on the home stretch of our hike.

The American Dream may very well still be found in westward-ho; movement and travel. Rev-rev-rev like Kesey across the country from coast to coast…

Last summer I had the pleasure of joining a group of Sierra Club Members – my wife included – for a seven day hike through Rae Lakes Loop, Sequoia National Park, CA. The trip inspired me more than any book I’d ever read, and the people on the trip – all nearly two decades or more older – became to me something like silent mentors. Through the seven days on the backcountry trail, over rivers, and camping under the stars, I got to know some pretty great individuals. For once I was surrounded by people who’d been cut from a similar cloth; the kind of folks who, due to circumstance or location, I’d never run into before.

Nearly nine months later I sit here trying to sort out why this was such an important experience, and why these people were so important to me.

—–

It must come from the desire to do Something Good; from the general confusion I feel when trying to figure out what that is; from the frustration of having nobody to point me in the right direction. Meeting a group of people who are like you – who have the same motivations, views on life, but maybe a good dose of extra experience – is not so simple. Finding someone like that who’s willing to help you is even more difficult.

But I want that, and I’m pretty sure everyone feels this way.

Exiting the wilderness on July 14th, I was decidedly more motivated to conquer the world, take on a non-profit job, and generally become a do-gooder environmentalist that everyone seems to make fun of. Just do something. My course was, if not clear, at least in sight. But our group split up, went their separate ways, and settled back into life.

And now here I am, but I really haven’t gotten anywhere since that day. Here’s how it played out: I got back to work in Chicago a few days after the trip ended, and a week later I’d lost all the inspiration and energy to change the world. It seems pretty natural. Trip’s over, fun time’s done… and now the real world settles in all around your ideals and pretty much smothers them. This is disappointing, and as far as I can tell, it’s why people go on to further education or a bar crawler’s life – it staves off the dulling reality of The Bummer Life a little longer.

Along another line of thought, it’s understandable why people settle down into regular jobs and live low on the radar. Changing the world doesn’t pay the bills. It’s time consuming, hard, thankless work. Besides that, there’s very few people around to encourage you.

—–

How does this all tie into any central thesis?

I think we probably all need a good mentor to help us find our way. For those of us looking to really make a difference, we’ll need all the direction we can get – it’s easy to get lost without help. But I firmly believe most people, given the chance and the resources, will opt to help others.

Along those lines, some friends from the Public Policy program at University of Chicago and I have started up a website – justworldchicago.com – to try and help people find their way through the non profit world and onto Good work. The website should be up soon, and if anything, it might help someone find the mentor they’re looking for. I’m still looking for mine.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 12:45 am and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.