Comment by finnthehuman

>I also don't follow why you haven't stated whether you've personally tried volunteering and whether it's "worked" for you, particularly when you seem dismissive of it and seem to looking for personal reasoning from others.

I do. I did not start to distract myself from other life issues, I joined because I wanted to help the org accomplish it's mission. It's rewarding and fulfilling, but I'm not using it as a mental defense from something else in my life. Whether or not it "worked" in that sense is simply not a thing for me.

It certainly shifted a lot of my mental focus. That's why I mentioned you can lean hard into things in life as a distraction for what's consuming you. And I've certainly used that mental defense over the years, it just happened that the things I used didn't include volunteering. And over the years I've noticed through others that volunteering is a particularly good way of self-deception that you're not just employing that defense.

That's why shaming someone into volunteering when they're rudderless bothers me. It's hard to argue against because it has intrinsic value AND can work in the "the true $whatever was the friends we made along the way" sense, plus the slim chance they find a new life purpose. But also maybe it doesn't and they really should have been shamed into joining the clergy instead because that's where they would have found their calling.