A friend of mine who worked as a social worker in a hospital told me a story that stuck with me. She had a conversation with an in-patient having a very difficult time. It was helpful, but as she was leaving, they told her wistfully 'You get to go home'. She found it hard to hear—it felt like an admonition. It was hard not to feel guilt over indeed getting to leave the facility and try to stop thinking about it, when others didn't have that luxury.
The story really stuck with me. I resonate with the guilt of being in the fortunate position of being able to go back to my comfortable home and chill with my family while so many beings can't escape the horrible situations they're in, or whose very chance at existence depends on our work.
Hearing the story was helpful for dealing with that guilt. Thinking about my friend's situation it was clear why she felt guilty. But also clear that it was absolutely crucial that she did go home. She was only going to be able to keep showing up to work and having useful conversations with people if she allowed herself proper respite. It might be unfair for her patients that she got to take the break they didn't, but it was also very clearly in their best interests for her to do it.
Having a clear-cut example like that to think about when feeling guilt over taking time off is useful. But I also find the framing useful beyond the obvious cases.
When morality feels all-consuming
Effective altruism can sometimes feel all consuming. Any spending decision you make affects how much you can donate. Any activity you choose to do takes time away from work you could be doing to help others. Morality can feel as if it's making claims on even the things which are most important to you, and most personal.
Often the narratives with which we push back on such feelings also involve optimisation. We think through how many hours per week we can work without burning out, and how much stress we can handle before it becomes a problem.
I do find that kind of thinking useful for setting up my default work hours and donation levels. But for me they don't address the whole problem. Thinking about things in those terms still gives me the feeling of needing to justify every action I take. I think there’s an important sense in which that’s right, but my brain still instinctively balks at the idea.
Beyond the reach of morality
A frame I find useful to inhabit, at least some of the time, is that there are some aspects of my life that are 'beyond the reach of morality'. Or in other words I try to sometimes be in a mindset that EA is my job, and I’m not always on duty. My main considerations for deciding whether something will be ‘out of morality’s reach’ for me are:
- How important it is to me
- How significantly it affects my impact
- How personal it feels
Inhabiting this framework helps me feel like I really can in an important sense 'go home at the end of a work day' rather than being perpetually on moral duty.
Some applications feel natural: by default I don't work more than two evenings weekly because I want time with my family. Others are less obvious but equally important. Friendship is in this category for me. So is food—as a picky eater, when I go to vegan events I go offsite for meals or bring food rather than angsting about it each time. I treat meal breaks as 'off duty'.
I expect that other people should draw the boundaries very differently to me. For example, they might feel fine optimising pretty hard on food, but never want to work on weekends.
Living it out
I've found this framework useful as a way of thinking through my actions. But I've also very much appreciated ways in which my colleagues and community members have helped me live it out. It's easy to fall back into stressing about whether to take a meeting or attend a work social on a non-work evening. I love that I work with others who are good at helping me notice that it might seem worth it right now, but that I also need to consider whether it will contribute to a pattern of feeling like everything in my life is at the world's disposal.
I'm really grateful to the friend who shared this story with me. It's been very helpful for me to think through which things constitute 'getting to go home' for me and how to make sure I keep doing that. And crucially, how to feel good rather than guilty about it.
For others who find it hard to live up to their own standards (and those of an ambitious community!): you get to go home. In fact it’s crucial that you keep doing so.
This piece really moved me—thank you for writing it. The line “you get to go home” caught me in the chest. I’ve worked in roles where I carried the weight of others’ stories long after the shift ended, and I’ve wrestled with that guilt: of stepping away, of being able to rest, of having the option to disconnect when others can’t.
What you’ve written here names something I’ve been slowly learning—that caring deeply doesn’t mean being endlessly available, and that our effectiveness (and our humanity) actually depends on knowing when to “go home,” whatever that looks like for each of us.
The idea of some things being beyond the reach of morality feels like such a relief. Permission to not justify rest, relationships, or joy as long-term strategies for impact—but to hold them as inherently worthwhile. I’ve struggled with the impulse to optimize everything, even the personal, and this gave me a way to reframe that.
Thanks for your thoughtful words.
Really glad to hear this resonated with you. Good luck figuring out how and when to go home x