Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a unique framework for thinking through your moral dilemmas. It’s based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. To submit a question, fill out this anonymous form. Here’s this week’s question from a reader, condensed and edited for clarity:

I’ve worked in communications for the past decade helping get important ideas out to the public. I’m good at what I do and I think it’s useful, but I don’t really feel like I’m having a grand impact on the world.

Meanwhile, some of my friends have built their entire careers around the goal of having the biggest positive impact possible. They’re busy pulling big levers — doing global health work that saves lives, shaping federal policy that protects the environment, etc. I feel like my contribution is tiny in comparison.

I know life’s not a competition, but I grew up being told I was smart and had so much potential to change the world, and I worry I’m not living up to that. On the other hand, I also value work-life balance and relationships and experiences outside of work. Should I consider switching careers to something more impactful? Do I need to have an extraordinary career, or is it okay to just do an average amount of good and live a small(ish) life?

Dear Impact-Minded,

How do you feel about the fact that you’re going to die one day?

That might sound like a weird place to start, but I ask because I think fear of our mortality is what drives a lot of our modern quest for extraordinary careers.

In fact, the American anthropologist Ernest Becker argued in his 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, that one of the main functions of culture is to offer effective ways to manage the terror of knowing that we’re going to die and eventually be forgotten.

Key takeaways

• We’ve inherited an assumption that we need to do something “grand” in life. But anthropologist Ernest Becker would say that insistence on achieving a major legacy is just us trying to manage our fear of mortality.
• As Saint Thérèse of Lisieux pointed out, the world would be pretty monotonous if everyone was focused exclusively on the highest-impact ways to do good.
• Instead of obsessing about “doing good,” think about all the “goods” that life offers you. If you start from a place of gratitude, you’ll naturally want to share with others.

The prospect of absolute........

© Vox