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Brandon Lee Weaver's avatar

I'm glad I was exploring your page and found this. I often get stuck with the options, especially around “doing good.” The rounding up every transaction thing has bothered me, and I think you helped me understand why. It’s relentless, and that's annoying, but I'm detached from the cause. Detached from the good. “Does it even do good?”

Where I most connected was choosing one place, ideally local, to serve. To commit to and share my time, resources, and voice.

I just contacted two friends who work with refugees and Spanish speakers learning English and asked if I could help.

Thank you.

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Melissa's avatar

I’m so happy to read this! It’s so much more meaningful when you’re directly involved. Would love to hear about how it reframes things for you!

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Brandon Lee Weaver's avatar

I'll let you know where I end up.

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Bread Stacker's avatar

Breath is an awesome book

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Melissa's avatar

I’m only at the beginning but it’s totally blowing my mind!

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Justin Ross's avatar

I wholeheartedly support trading in the vast for the local, the "I can't even do anything about this" for the "I can actually do something."

We're so focused on the global that we forget to make a difference where we actually can, which is with the people feet or yards from us.

I've been doing the same thing: I no longer donate to causes I can't see. What I am willing to do is give someone 50 bucks or pay for their groceries when they forgot their wallet. A few weeks ago I jumped two separate people's cars, two days in a row. That made me feel better than donating on a checkout screen ever has. It made my community slightly better. And it led to some nice conversations.

Cheers to you.

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Melissa's avatar

Jumping a car for someone in a jam is a pretty big immediate win! That’s amazing. I’ve thought about from working in News how bad it can be for people’s mental health to have the scale so lopsided between awareness and action. So glad it resonated!

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Matt Joass's avatar

This was great Mel!

I think you might dig Radical Wholeness by Philip Shepherd, it deepened my understanding of intuition

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Melissa's avatar

I’ll check it out!

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