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Big Dive

Great story about taking action instead of experiencing climate anxiety, having a skill and putting it to use:

“I’ve been jumping for 25 years, and I’ve always pushed the limits with risky jumps,” he shares. “Now, I’m 51 years old, and I don’t have that drive for danger anymore. I want to do something to help. Like the seed drop, this next project will have real meaning behind it.”

Reading this got me thinking about things I have seen people his age do drive change where they can and how they can, gifting their time and talent. There is E who left his senior executive job in a large bank to become a high school math teacher. His kids had left to college and wife after decades of staying home to raise the kids, had returned to her physical therapist job she absolutely loved. There was no pressing need for his big salary and he decided to go make the best difference he could - get kids to love math. It's been almost a decade now and he still at it and loving it. 

The way E tells it, that was a scary transition to make and he had no idea if it had it in him to be a good math teacher and if the kids he hoped to transform would even like him. The first couple of years were a bit bumpy- he had to unlearn everything from his successful banking career and have the kids teach him how to teach them. Not quite the same act of daring as this skydiver dropping 100 million seeds in the Amazon but E has no doubt made a lasting contribution as a high-school teacher and will continue to do so. E is a role model to many of us who knew him professionally - he demonstrated by his example, what we could all aspire to do in our own way.

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