I think it can be hard to judge our effect on those outside ourselves from inside? When I get to wondering what I am contributing, I think of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" and how it just takes a small act to change things for others; your cookie-bringing could be important and you never know it. Think of the small things that have mattered to you in your life and that your teacher, friend-of-that-time, etc. may not have known/understand.

Too, there's the future and we don't know that maybe everything has been leading up to some moment 2 months from now? I believe we keep getting more ourselves/"bigger" as we go through life from what we are learning/experiencing and the process leads somewhere and what is in the process matters. I am a genealogist and like to think about how much "chance" there was getting to me; I specialize in maiden aunts and children who died young, etc., how they "mattered" in their own lives to their siblings or parents lives. I have a 3rd great grand aunt I'm studying now, she was born in 1755 and died in 1813, was a teacher (owned/ran her own school in London for 20 years or so) and how I don't know who her students were or who those girls married, but there's a ripple effect and something could have happened that was "necessary" and if my aunt hadn't been being herself, doing what she was doing, things would have been different, maybe in a negatively perceived way?

Pick something you enjoy, would like to study. I'm thinking about myself, I have no children of my own, am like my maiden aunts :-) and I'm remembering their stories, digging them up, getting to know their name and placing them in their "place" in my background. They were all "necessary" and helping in my development. My great grandmother was raised by her aunt, who never married, and the aunt was quite famous, her statue is in the US Capitol, representing the State of Minnesota: Maria Sanford | Architect of the Capitol | U.S. Capitol Building

Yes, she was "famous" and her niece, my great grandmother, was "just" a mother of my great uncle and grandfather, but my great grandmother also had two college degrees, earned in the early 1880's, and supported her family as my great grandfather (a signer of the Idaho Constitution in 1890, "famous" in his own right) was a failure at making money/business.

Our biggest task in life, I think, is to discover and "be" ourselves, work on what our background, aptitudes, interests and experiences give us to work on and nor worry so much about how useful it may/may not be. I'm thinking of writing a novel/diary for my 3 great grand niece to read in 50-75 years to encourage her