1) Helping people. Doing interesting and creative things. 2) Not actually, nor having to perpetually severely worry about, being screwed over with respect t

1) Helping people. Doing interesting and creative things. 2) Not actually, nor having to perpetually severely worry about, being screwed over with respect to basic quality of life. Access to reasonable and effective health care. A decent place to live (for me, that means mostly quiet and hopefully with a decent portion of friendly neighbors). Knowing that when I can no longer work, I won't end up in a hell hole. Sounds pretty modest, doesn't it? Yet today, in the U.S., it's becoming increasingly illusive and uncertain. A major downside of categorizing into "winners" and "losers" and focusing on some dystopian fervor for a modern-day "manifest destiny." In my case, some crap health care (despite my relatively affluent circumstances) set the stage early for additional struggle. Things just kept spiraling down, and the advice I received only reinforced this. Now -- too late -- I believe you can't have these things, unless you make your primary job learning how to and practicing sticking up for yourself. I think a lot of my generation got quite fucked over by unrealistic instruction such as "the bully is only hurting himself", "collaboration [undifferentiated, un-qualified] is the future", "things will turn out all right in the end", "you're so [smart|pretty|special]", etc. So now, my ideal career would be teaching all this by example. Whatever you do, teach by example.