Right on, Russ!  

And if there is no grand scheme, if nothing we do really matters then all that matters is what we do.  Kindness is key.

Good one!

It can be abused if I give unasked for advice, try to fix others and make decisions for others.  

And to Dr Mercola's advice at the end I would add my dad's advice to me, on which I failed to act for too many years:

Either say 'no' OR say 'yes' and do it with good grace. If you say 'yes' and grumble about it, people will still use you but they will also dislike and disrespect you.

He also said that if you try to be all things to all people you end up being not much to anybody.

Are you my long lost twin??  Sometimes I think I'd have to have extensive plastic surgery, and maybe liposuction, before anyone would listen to me. That's why I write.

Ok, I get that the strangers I sometimes take to task in supermarkets think I'm well strange - don't want to be told that the 'healthy option', 'cholesterol-reducing' low fat spread they're looking at actually contains transfats (even though it's right there on the label).

Even my own mother, who knew that I'd been studying nutrition and alternative medicine for years, AND that I was a member of a society for the highly gifted, would just look irritated when I warned her about statins and the many other drugs they had her taking. "The doctors know more than YOU about this!"  That was of course before she lost her 'marbles', had a stroke and I had to move her to a nursing home and sell her house to pay for it.

Now she does gratefully eat the fresh fruit and raw nuts I bring her when I visit, but she's not sure who I am anymore.

I have friends, a couple, who are both doctors. One is a former surgeon who retrained as a GP (in the UK, GPs earn more than surgeons for far more sociable hours) and her husband is a consultant psychiatrist. They are good hosts and when I stayed at their house for a weekend they bought in real, organic butter just for me, stating that they ate only low-fat spread because it's healthier.

When I pointed out that there was a great deal of research indicating that saturated fat and dietary cholesterol are not at all bad for you, while margarines are pretty suspect, their response was first a little insulted and then patronising.

"You really shouldn't spend so much time reading all these crazy things."

I offered to send them some articles and studies and they shook their heads, saying "There's no need. We're both doctors! We know!"  I asked if they had spent any time researching the issues and they said they didn't need to. After all "... EVERYBODY knows cholesterol is bad for you."

This psychiatrist has told me that Ritalin actually helps a child's brain to develop better but, to his credit, has also expressed severe doubts that all the antidepressants he prescribes actually do any good.

I wonder if they'll listen to me once I've qualified as a nutritional therapist? Probably not.

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Nathan210, alas I have found that people USE those that make themselves insanely useful, and pay only just enough to keep you coming into work every day.

In one job, I regularly put together 10-year cash-flow/profit analyses of the boss's and clients' proposed investments, did legal translating that the lawyers said was equal to, and sometimes better than, work from professional legal translating bureaus, set up and ran extensive project administration and computerised bookkeeping and was responsible for invoicing and credit control. I put it unpaid evenings and weekends as a rule, not an exception. Yet I was still expected to drop everything to answer the phone (just to put it through), get coffee for 'the guys' and do photocopying. For my job title was 'secretary' and I was paid accordingly.

Some time after I'd left, I ran into old colleagues who told me that my replacement was a disaster. But what good did that do me?