A late mid-life crisis?

I drifted into the Charitable -Voluntary- NGO sector  more than 30 years ago when I started   working in a rural clinic in India as a young doctor. At that time it wasn't a 'sector' and many friends and associates would fail to understand what I was doing and it was difficult to explain what I did other than attending patients . The new way of working in rural communities, which I learnt initially more by hit and miss rather than design was exhilarating. It allowed me to arrange for providing essential health care services in a way people found more acceptable. I learnt of and met others who were similarly engaged and also learnt from them. It became apparent that this new frame of working , which was becoming known as the NGO, was an appropriate vehicle for serving my own aspirations to both understand and serve. There were several agencies that provided financial support if they felt that the work we did was useful. 

Over the years the NGO sector became more formalised and I became a part of it. 

The International Conferences of the nineties especially the Beijing and Cairo conferences provided me with new insights on how I could contribute as a public health doctor to the larger societal objectives at the community and other levels. For the next two decades and more I threw myself into work that I felt would help in the realisation of both a personal and larger societal goals. The tools now were different and meant meeting many people, attending meetings, talking at various platforms, writing and sharing reports, notes, briefing sheets, papers doing research and so on. 

In the thirty years that I have been part of it, the non-profit sector and civil society, as the sector is now known has grown and  has many more players. Many more new tools and strategies are being used as well as many of the earlier ones. But those goals that I had seem to be slipping further away.

As I look around the world today, it is a different world. Today we live in a world full of conveniences, but I often feel disappointed. Many of the dreams that I had dreamt, along with many others, have not really come about. If we have moved forward a few steps, there are many areas we have moved back many. Many people's lives have have changed for the better, but many people still continue to be left far behind. The collective vision of well being seems torn apart by strife, conflict and war. 

Adversity is a part of life, but I wonder, why I don't feel the sense of hope that I had earlier. Is it just that I have grown older, and this despondence is a sign of age? Or is it that I am living in a parallel universe and the common social goals have changed and I need to wake up.