As long as I’m keeping a running list, cont.

“How to Be Useful” as per 2 Corinthians.

And in common-school education during George III’s reign:

There were no cheap books or newspapers, and no proper system of public instruction. The poor seldom left the counties in which they were born. They knew nothing of what was going on in the world. Their education was wholly of that practical kind which comes from work and things, not from books and teachers; yet many of them with only these simple helps found out two secrets which the highest culture sometimes misses, – how to be useful and how to be happy.

As long as I’m keeping a running list, cont.

Maestronet forums:

“This is a personal thing. Fortunately my food, clothing, shelter and basic violin making needs are covered. I would starve if I had to make violins for a living. I would enjoy making a contribution to knowledge in the field. Folksinger Pete Seeger (90) recently said “I just want to be useful.” I agree with that. My grandchildren will better remember me if I teach them how to be useful.”

Quoting Howard Rheingold:

Just participating isn’t enough. You must have something of value to others.”, “Need to feed (people) what’s valuable to them. To participate you have to learn how not to be boring and how to be useful.”

Character advancement in gaming:

…they adopted a girl from a primitive world, and set about to start teaching her how to be useful aboard ship.

Gamers — saucy. Earlier: Here and here and here.

As long as I’m keeping a running list of “how to be useful” mentions…

How to be useful = a trait which can’t be cultivated by accident, tends to be learned alongside independence. Says a mom.

Sting contemplates his Christmas album

As quoted in several AP-fed papers: “I’m 58. I’m not in the winter of my life but I’m definitely preparing for it, so it reminds you of your mortality, the short span of years we have on the planet, what to do with that, how to be useful, how to be meaningful.”

How to be useful = release a Christmas album. I’m still wrapping my head around this. Is a collection of old(e) English advent hymns more / less useful than “Wrapped Around Your Finger“? I don’t know the answer.

Re. the video. Candles, white suit, sunglasses, dancing. All in one! Not just anybody can pull this off. It does take a special someone.

found in an old notebook

“How can you bear to be so contemptible, when others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be done—how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is useful?” —Middlemarch

the latest Google “How to Be Useful” alert…

…brings us to Malaysia, and advice on how to survive an economic downturn. First suggestion? Renew interest in your hobbies. “If no hobby, get one soon.” Then:

If you need income, then you may have to forgo your enjoyment for the time being and think seriously of how to be useful to others, especially those with cash so that when they are happy with you in whatever you were doing for them, they would or might give you some cash.

If you are without talent or ideas, and you are hungry, then I suggest that you go to the countryside or maybe your parents back home and go to the nearby forest and gather some fruits or vegetables or hunt for some meat in order to feed yourself.

In defense of “Useful”

Over the past two years, when I’ve described this book to people, I’ve encountered occasional static when I reveal the title. “How to Be Useful?” they’ll ask, unsure they’ve heard correctly, not convinced anyone would aspire to such a state. There’s a novel called How to Be Good (Nick Hornby), a collection of essays titled How to Be Alone (Jonathan Franzen, who I imagine knows a lot about that subject), but “useful” sounds like a totally unnecessary addition to the how-to canon. Plus, my book’s about other books that tell you how to be successful—“successful” everybody gets, and can more or less appreciate. Successful sparkles. Useful seems a more apt description of cordless appliances.

I chose useful because I wanted to suggest that most early efforts toward gaining professional traction are fundamentally misguided. With few exceptions, you’ll work your way up in an organization not by dazzling people with your skills, but by fulfilling very specific needs for specific individuals in highly defined ways. Because you meet these needs, it’s more useful to have you around than it is to not have you around. Period. First step of ladder—that’s all it is.

This, of course, is entirely amoral. (That is to say, it’s neither virtue nor vice. Both Montessori kindergarten teachers and the Waffen-SS fit the above criteria for their respective organizations.) But then I’d say that by advocating for usefulness, that on some exceedingly flimsy philosophical level I’m suggesting that most of us, most days, just need to get over ourselves. And divert some of our angst and excess energy toward helping—not hurting—any poor suckers so unfortunate as to bump into us. I love a good misanthropic, self-absorbed crank as much as the next girl, but these days it seems too many people adopt that pose without the life experience or the scars to really deserve it. Anybody who hasn’t lost a limb to a landmine, so to speak, needs to step up.

So yes, useful. As opposed to useless.