The Importance Of Choosing Your Battles
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Want to change the world? Choose your battles wisely.
There are so many battles that await us.
Battles like climate change, gender and racial equality, economic disparities, access to healthcare and education; if I were to list them all, this blog post would be much too long.
These battles are essential; winning them will progress our planet and society towards fairness, sustainability, meaning, and happiness.
With so many battles, it would be impossible for any sole person to fight them all and do so effectively. Quite frankly, it’s hard enough to fight one single battle effectively as it is, let alone them all. Perhaps if a human were granted infinite time and resources, they would have a chance at emerging victorious over all of these battles — but even still, it would come down to a matter of execution.
In reality, we don’t have infinite resources or time.
Consider we humans have an 85ish year lifespan. If we subtract the 15 years we spend in school and the 10 years split between the start and finish we spend in diapers, about 60 years remain (and even that’s being generous), which we could potentially dedicate towards fighting battles.
Your Time Is Limited
“Memento Mori”, a Latin phrase that means “remember that you will die. Since death is inevitable, our time is limited; therefore, we each must be careful how we spend that time. We must choose the battles we want to participate in wisely.
Being wise in our selection, means being specific with what battles we want to put our limited amount of time and energy towards.
We as individuals cannot fight in all of them, but so many of us believe we can. When we dilute our energy, time, and resources across all battles, we weaken our potential from helping to not contributing to them at all.
If you stand for everything, you stand for nothing.
Depending on how broad or specific you want to be, we could easily define hundreds if not thousands of battles…
