Somehow this doesn’t sit right with me. I know that people have breaking points (maybe more than most), and I don’t believe in optimizing everything in your life in a way that doesn’t reflect what actually motivates you.

I think more abstractly, about doing wrong, and don’t imagine that woman unable to help her family. I feel more as if a sense of sin were building up and up that presses urgently on me, to do justice. I do feel guilty about most of my life, and feel like I owe the world a lot. But the emotional reality of that isn’t just a burden but also a sense of self and empowerment. Changing your daily view from thinking about the checkout line to something else would seem like a betrayal of something like god to me. It’s hard for me to imagine. I think I might prefer to break up than lose the sense in everything I do that being a human being powerfully matters.

Thoughts?

Who are the altruists in Baltimore? I’m a naive do-gooder who gave away a kidney, turned apartments into homeless shelters and give away almost all my money. I’m studying to be a nurse and trying to raise money fo Partners In Health.

I’m hoping to find like-minded people to give advice, or encouragement, or ideas. Maybe this is the wrong place to ask to meet someone but I’ve never met anyone who thinks like me, and it damages so many relationships to refuse to spend money on a movie outing or meal—people seem to need those to be social. How do people live compatible with others?