“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
As I was doing some soul searching in July, I saw that Jessica Jackley, co-founder of microlending site Kiva.org, would be speaking at Google. I hurried to catch her talk and highly recommend it:
Afterward I really enjoyed reading Clay Water Brick: Finding Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Who Do the Most with the Least. At some point I will finish pulling out the most resonant bits & will post them here. Meanwhile, quick points:
- Kiva was born out of a desire to combine real human connections (vs. just transactions) with scalable, measurable impact. Earlier Jessica had been working at Stanford by day (where people talked in really ambitious but slightly impersonal terms about world-changing enterprises) and by night working with young mothers in East Palo Alto (where she made deep personal connections but questioned what change was resulting). Kiva is meant to foster real connections between entrepreneurs (many of whose stories she tells in the book) & lenders like you & me.
- Sometimes you have to “dump the quarterback.” In high school she was asked out by Johnny Football Hero, and of course she had to say yes (as one does). But the guy was kind of a bore, and she dumped him (sacrilege!). It’s tough, but when the inside doesn’t match the outside (be it in a relationship, an ostensible dream job, etc.), something has to change.
I think you’ll find both the talk & the book rewarding, and if you’d like to get started lending via Kiva, check out my lender page and jump in!
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John, did you see this article?
I’m not intending to imply you’re in any sort of “crisis”, as we all still seem to call it or would take the author’s more…non-theistic approach, but it’s an interesting read anyway.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/how-david-hume-helped-me-solve-my-midlife-crisis/403195/
Thanks, Austin. I haven’t seen it but will take a look.