I wrote a different entry earlier today,

only to realize that I really don't want people to think I'm suicidal or anything. So this is my second attempt to explain my thoughts.

I had been back in Bowling Green for approximately four hours when it hit me that I haven't the slightest clue what I'm doing here. I don't know that anything I do matters; in fact, I have more than a lurking suspicion that it doesn't. I don't respect my education. I don't see great meaning in mock trial. I don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything, or doing anything for the world. I feel like, should I die tomorrow, there would be nothing to say at my funeral other than what a shame it is that I didn't get to carry out plans x and y.

Jenny and I were discussing this whole train of thought when I remembered a story I heard this weekend. Andrew (a friend of my little sister) was living in Mexico, going to an intensive art program rather than an American high school. He had a few friends with him, but at some point they just ran out of money. So they left their apartment and hitch-hiked to another city, where they were taken in by a stranger--a woman in her seventies. Inside, they were seated around the biggest dining room table imaginable, fifteen chairs surrounding solid wood four inches thick. And, unprompted, turning to Andrew, the woman said in perfect Spanish, "I thank God every day that you could be here to eat my food. Because without you, my table is empty."

I want moments like that. I want moments that make me see meaning in life. I want to feel like I've done something good, something that will have a lasting effect in this world. And I'm not referring to the manly need to leave a prodigy. I'm talking about the fact that in this life, in this world, the only thing I could ever possibly do that would be bigger than myself would be to help someone else, to make someone else's life better. And don't I owe that to the world? Don't I owe something for the privilege of being born in a nation where I'm not submitted to electroshock therapy as punishment for being sad, where I'm not mutilated in the name of tradition and purity, where I'm free to say I don't want to be part of organized religion, where I can choose to help other people because I really don't have it that bad after all?

And if I do owe that to the world, what am I doing here?