Do you want to be influential?

So do 57% of gen Zs in the US who aspire to be influencers, presumably lured by money and fame. But say you also want to make the world a better place. In that case, maybe the spiritual instruction you need emerges in the famous final lines of George Eliot’s 1871 novel Middlemarch:

“… the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Eliot offers a bracing reality check: the spotlight needn’t be on you for you to live an influential life. A life might be “hidden” – a heresy in the social media era, where everything exists to be shared – yet still well lived. You can shape the course of history, even if you leave little trace on it.

This strange idea takes on added significance for me at Christmas. The story of Jesus’s........

© The Guardian