As I’ve gotten older and most likely more mature, I’ve become far less cynical. I used to be dismissive of people trying to improve things and believed that they were just wasting their time and nothing would change. Yet as a I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate this effort even if it doesn’t lead to noticeable progress.

The fact that someone is working for their beliefs should be applauded. The waste is dismissing others’ work while sitting in front of a computer or a TV. We all want to see progress and yet we exert effort belittling others that are actually committed to making things better. If we applied this effort into our own passions we’d be all be much better off.

Teddy Roosevelt said this better than I ever could:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.