The poet Mary Oliver asks: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

This is the most important question any of us will ever ask. Not long ago I went back for a reunion to the prep school in Tacoma I graduated from. Nearly all my classmates were leading comfortable lives in business or the professions. They worried about portfolios and college tuitions. To be honest, I was bored to death. Except by one man. I’ll call him Tom Noble. He’d been the class dunce, the butt of jokes. But for 30 years he’d been directing a social service agency in the worst area of Tacoma and had just started a controversial needle exchange program. Tom Noble was fascinating. He spoke with the charisma and energy and peace of mind of a person who had truly found his calling and answered it with everything he had. Like Tom Noble, if you find a way to serve, you’ll find a path to meaning that will bring joy to the deepest part of you. And service is an important way the problems that you care about will get solved.

But there are so many challenges and problems out there. How do you make the best possible use of the time and resources you’ve got? Which path is yours?

I guarantee you that there’s a problem out there with your name on it, something that you care about, someplace where you can make a difference.

If it’s not yet clear to you, here are some suggestions for finding a path of service that fits who you are:

Active citizenship isn’t just wishing something good might happen or cheering someone else on. But it need not mean upending your life. You don't have to save the world—maybe the problems that grab your attention are local. Maybe they have to do with some big, pressing social concern and maybe they don't. What’s important is to commit to the search for the problem that calls for you and, when you find it, to pitch into it with everything you’ve got. Do this not just for the people you’ll serve. Do it for you.