As our city burns, we Angelenos know with our whole body what it means. Our eyes are witness to the plume, lungs witness to ash. There is a sense we have been reminded of our personal relationship to the apocalypse.

The idea that the world is tailspinning toward an inescapable event horizon is an old one. It has been nurtured from so early that I have long grown accustomed to not wasting time daydreaming about life 10 years down the line. The refrain, “If humans are even still around…” lost its edge by middle school.

The lack of agency is so profound and inescapable that it becomes laughable. It is a list of potential apocalypses so lengthy that it is not clear when or what will do us in: antibiotics that threaten to create a superbug, rising temperatures bringing natural disasters and a looming third world war. Despite the hopelessness, many of Generation Z still want to help improve the state of the world; we just do not always know how or where to begin. 

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I’ve felt this dissonance personally. There is a sense of guilt for not doing enough, but a sense of shame when I react to that guilt with actions that do not feel meaningful enough or are not founded in real knowledge — like performative activism on social media. It is because of this I say, you cannot help the world until you help yourself.

When I suggest “helping yourself,” I am not touting surface level, trendy self-care. Rather, to make an actual, sustained effort in bettering your community and critically engaging in larger society, I believe it is onIy practical to begin by investing in yourself.

What I am calling “investing in yourself” someone else might call “self-actualizing” or “finding fulfillment.” It is a long-term process that can look like building community, identifying your own values, thinking critically about yourself and your place in the world or even going back and questioning knowledge that was fed to you before you became discerning about it.

To be clear, in many circumstances and situations, this is not an option — when lives and livelihoods are immediately at stake, like the Los Angeles wildfires, the time to act is now. However, once the urgency passes, there will still be more work to be done. It is for longer-term issues that feel less immediate that I believe self-investment is important. It might seem obvious, but it has not always been to me.

Even in times I could hardly get out of my own room, I was still ashamed of my inaction. I wanted to volunteer at local shelters but I could not even build the habit of eating three times a day. I wanted to read books about the history of today’s global conflicts and finally form my own coherent opinions beyond what I was fed to me on social media, but I was not even mustering the attention to read 10 pages of “Trixie and Katya’s Guide to Modern Womanhood” each night.

My life didn’t really feel worth living and my day did not feel worth having, so I am not sure where I thought the desire to involve myself in the world was going to come from. You need to realize why the world matters to you yourself. No one and nothing else can do that for you. 

Maybe it’s when you realize you enjoy the smell of flowers outside that you might also begin to understand why you care about climate change. Maybe your whole life, you have known you should care, but only by really realizing what life means to you will you internalize why you care. If this approach were emphasized, I believe it would reduce superficial activism in favor of promoting new activists whose fervor is substantiated by an engagement with life around them instead of mindless fear or shame.

If you feel intimidated as to where you can start, start small: Pick a cause or issue that has always stood out to you. Read, learn and understand the ways it manifests today and the systems that uphold it. See how others are getting involved. Talk to your friends. Get creative about how this might fit into your life in a practical way, just as you would with a habit like weightlifting or jogging. 

Shaming yourself about not doing enough doesn’t help you help the world, but giving yourself room to value your life and what you care about might. Always remember: It’s never too late to start.

Kevin Gramling is a senior writing about his search for meaning during his time at USC. In his column, “The S|existentialist,” that runs every other Monday, he is interested in what the daily chaos of being a USC student can teach us about the meaning of life.