Some kids grow up saying they want to change the world. Plenty of adults want to rebuild society. A decent number of people would like to fancy themselves a good role model.
I'll tell you a secret - they're largely the same thing. And whether or not you want to change lives is irrelevant You don't have to try to change anyone's life. You're already doing it.
Every person who sees you, interacts with you, or even hears about you, will use you as a data point. Not your entire existence - just slices of it. You might be their reference for "people who work in finance" or "people who read Dostoevsky" or "people who stay calm under pressure."
You are constantly teaching people, through your observable behaviours, whether anyone is consciously watching you or not.You don't need to be noticeable, notable, or especially significant, yet the way you live is a lesson.
As humans we absorb what's normal, what's possible, what's acceptable by watching those around us.
The psychologist Albert Bandura demonstrated this with his famous Bobo doll experiments in the 1960s:
Children who watched adults behaving aggressively toward an inflatable doll later imitated that behaviour without any explicit instruction. They weren't taught to be aggressive. They each had different genes and family backgrounds - but in that context, observation was enough.Each day you spew data points through your choices. Your coffee order complexity, how often you're late to meetings, how you handle stress, what you read on the train, whether you respond to emails at midnight.
Each observable choice you make updates someone's mental model of what's normal, acceptable or possible.
The Roman poet Juvenal wrote "maxima debetur puero reverentia" - the greatest respect is owed to the child. Not because children are sacred, but because they're watching everything. They're building their models of human behavior from what they observe, not what they're told. But adults learn the same way.
If someone knows ten lawyers and only one has a great marriage, that single data point teaches multiple lessons simultaneously:It's possible (existence proof)
It's rare (1/10 odds)
There might be distinguishing characteristics worth investigating
Or the outcome might just be randomIn an office known for burning people out, the person who consistently leaves at 4.59pm teaches you there are other viable modes of being. They don't need to loudly advocate for progressive policies or give impassioned speeches. But they demonstrate a path's viability through existence.
The writer David Foster Wallace observed that the most obvious, important realities are often the hardest to see and talk about. Water, to the fish. But those invisible realities shape everything.
This relates to what philosophers call "tacit knowledge" - the things we know without being able to articulate how we know them. Michael Polanyi wrote "we know more than we can tell." We understand our humanity through our observations.
You're not a single data point. You're thousands. People sample different aspects of you for different calibrations:What music is worth caring about
How much someone can drink and still be functional
Whether people with your background can do XYZ
What "having your life together" actually looks likeEvery time someone says "I know someone who..." they're calling on one of these slices. Not your whole life - just one narrow band that's relevant to their question.
So what do you teach?
Are you expanding someone's sense of possibility or confirming their limitations? Are you demonstrating that boundaries are viable or that overwork is necessary? Are you showing that intellectual curiosity exists among "people like us" or that it's weird and rare?
You can't opt out of being a model. Your coffee order, your punctuality, your stress responses, your conflict handling - each of us provides data for the rest of us.
