In 1927, Buckminster Fuller was about to huck himself into Lake Michigan so his wife and kid could collect on his life insurance policy. He was broke, a failure in all attempts at normal-society success. Instead of following through, he decided to see if the Universe would provide for his material needs if he dedicated his thoughts and actions purely to the betterment of mankind.
“If I take oath never again to work for my own advantaging and to work only for all others for whom my experience-gained knowledge may be of benefit, I may be justified in not throwing myself away.” Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path
Nutty dude, but apparently it worked out okay for him.
Now, I'm not desperate or a failure, I don't have a family depending on my earning potential, and I don't have a life insurance policy. But I've always been really intrigued by Buckminster's life-as-experiment. I love the simple brutality of his guiding principle for making life decisions. He just completely cut away all decisions and actions related to how to make a living or be traditionally successful, and focused only on things that might help humanity out. According to him, the universe always provided, one way or another, typically at the very last moment. He (and his wife) must have had nerves of steel.
Bucky's metaphysics and mine are divergent. I don't have faith that the universe will provide for me. The world is littered with the husks of good people who got crushed by one thing or another. But - let's take that famous and overused quote from Howard Thurman, combine it with Buckminster Fuller’s origin story, and see what we get:
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman (maybe)
If you do an internet image search with that quote, you will get the sense that people think the world needs people who come alive by doing jump shots on the beach with their friends, or sitting on the edge of cliffs, or eating ice cream while smiling (which is difficult, by the way). Typical motivational fluff. People have criticized the quote as a) not actually being said by Thurman, and b) being an excuse for self-indulgence. Excellent criticism, I agree with b and don't care if a is true or not.
But let's give Thurman a break and assume that, if he did indeed say that, he wasn't just saying YOLO but with more elegance. What I think he meant was that if you want to impact the world in any way, if you want to get at and fulfill your purpose in life, you gotta follow your stoke. There's actually some science to back this up.
“When I was a college runner, I had teammates whose drive and determination seemed almost boundless on the track, and nearly absent in the classroom, and vice versa. Instead of asking whether someone is gritty, we should ask when they are. “If you get someone into a context that suits them,” Ogas said, “they’ll more likely work hard and it will look like grit from the outside.”” -David Epstein, Range
In other words, if there isn't some kind of seemingly mystical reserve of energy deep in your soul that will keep driving you and helping you believe in your work through dark times, you're probably not going to get very far. You have to find those actions that have a main line tapped into that deep soul energy and focus on those, and see how you can employ those actions in the world.
In a sense, what Buckminster Fuller did was say "I'm only going to do those things that make me come alive and that I can employ for the good of humankind/in accordance with Universe, and ignore basically everything else". I think that by eliminating normal considerations for material success and security, he figured out a way to only spend time doing things that had a connection to his innate reserves of energy.
I have in mind to do a similar thing. Because I spend very little and have a little savings, I have a reprieve from having to do anything remunerative for a few years. I have a sense of the sorts of things that make me come alive, and I have a sense for how I can employ those things in the service of Planet.
At the highest level, my aim is to engage in those actions with minimal concern for conventional success/security, with the idea that my material needs will be adequately supplied by the operating principles of the universe. Put another, less woo way; If I just focus entirely on doing things that I'm good at that other people find value in, then material sufficiency will be an inevitable side-effect and I don't need to worry about it.
Note that I said "adequately supplied", not "rewarded handsomely." This is not a mystical get-rich-quick scheme. I just think if I do what I'm stoked to do with an eye towards how it can provide value to others, including non-human beings, I'll be all right.