Seeing a lot of great responses and content in the comments, I love it. You’re clearly not alone! Echoing what others have said, I like to frame the goal as “finding a way to be useful.” There are so many ways to be useful, and intelligence is just one input (keep in mind that smart people are probably especially good at Appearing Useful, especially online). Diligence, pragmatism, humility, sociability, plus a million other abilities are inputs too, and they’re basically all things you can improve at. Getting smarter is obviously helpful to being useful, but we can’t let it be the whole picture. Until we run out of opportunities to do good, there are opportunities for anyone to make a difference.
Seeing a lot of great responses and content in the comments, I love it. You’re clearly not alone! Echoing what others have said, I like to frame the goal as “finding a way to be useful.” There are so many ways to be useful, and intelligence is just one input (keep in mind that smart people are probably especially good at Appearing Useful, especially online). Diligence, pragmatism, humility, sociability, plus a million other abilities are inputs too, and they’re basically all things you can improve at. Getting smarter is obviously helpful to being useful, but we can’t let it be the whole picture. Until we run out of opportunities to do good, there are opportunities for anyone to make a difference.