“3/14/11
I want to change the world.
A funny sentiment isn’t it. Six words. Said millions of time, everyday, by an infinite number of different individuals. Today I say it. Tomorrow, a young child listening to tales of epic battles and heroic ventures will utter it in his dreams. Yesterday, a man on his death bed remembered the first time he whispered those words as he looked up at the dark blue sky, dotted with stars, blanketed with the gray wisps of cloud.
Little did that man know that the world would do everything in its power to stop him from his dream. Little does that young boy know that tomorrow, somewhere, a disaster, a tragedy, a turn for the worse, whether it be by man’s hand or Nature’s, will make it infinitely more complex for him to fulfill his proclamation. Little do I know.
To wrap one’s mind around the magnitude of such a sentence, of six words, that when standing alone, have little meaning – have ordinary meaning, is to stretch beyond man’s historical capacity and instead to admit what we are all afraid to confess: we are all, almost inconceivably, insignificant. We know nothing. We are nothing.
And yet, we are powerful and strong beyond our wildest dreams. But fear keeps us in the dark. The fear to realize man’s full potential, the fear to realize the dream of every human who ever stepped foot onto the solid ground that keeps us afloat in a sea of stars, planets, blackness, and more so – wonder.
I don’t want to change the world.
No. That was never my destiny. It was never my intention.
Instead, I want to leave a legacy. One of no paper trails, no documented footage, no fame. No, I want to leave my legacy through the lives I touch, through the small changes I’ve made, through the random acts of kindness and the accidental selflessness. I don’t want to be known for my accomplishments, but rather I want to die with the knowledge that somewhere, I accomplished something. I know nothing. This I know. I have my starting point. I will spend the rest of my life trying to move forward from here.
In short, yes, I really do hope they call me henry when I die, too.”
I wrote this, as it says on the original date, in March of 2011. It was never meant to be read by anyone else, in all honesty, it was one of those moments in which I was feeling particularly dramatic and ignorantly “philosophical”. Unfortunately, as I realize now, looking back at this, I was excessively dramatic and neither philosophical nor profound, as I’m certain that was my unconscious intention. However, the inherent feeling and realization stands to be more true now than ever before. This past week has been, one of the worst of my life, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic and self-pitying. My closest friend in Egypt was arrested, along with two other students, for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails in Tahrir. Shortly after, another student went missing until two days later, confirming his safety with a pathetic facebook message to another student. More and more people have been injured and/or have died in Tahrir. And while of this seems unreasonable as an excuse for my mood, it has still made me contemplate my own significance, purpose, and potential for instigating meaningful change in the world. Just two weeks ago, I devised a change in my plan of study/work that would, ideally, start the ignition on a long drive ahead of me to affecting change. However, this week has made me reflect on a conversation with a friend at Drexel almost exactly a year ago, a conversation that haunts me in times such as the one at hand.
Mel began our long talk with saying, “I know nothing. I actually know nothing.” This fact, this harsh realization has become discouragingly more and more apparent to me as I continue my experiences abroad, with every person met, every conversation had, every moment experienced. I know nothing. I am insignificant. How could I, of all people in the world, do anything of worth to withstand time after I pass?
In the past, decades before today, the end of wars, the resolve to end war, hunger, and poverty, brought optimism, strengthened human resolve to aid others, created unity; today, the end of the war brings skeptical future relations, world tensions, and pessimism. The more I see of the world’s problems, the more insignificant I feel. With every passing tragedy, of every scale, I understand more and more, how little I understand; every bit of the news pushes me further into a deepening state of irrational depression – a manifestation of a growing realization of what I cannot do, of what I do now know, of what I will not change. This past week, along with times before, has made me more seriously question my choice of major/career than ever before – will I ever make it far enough? Will I ever be happy with what I do? Can I handle the harsh realities of the world firsthand? These questions haunt me incessantly, and my travels have both strengthened and solidified my desire to help people, and broken my spirit into pieces.
In all honesty, I don’t know which was my breaking point, but the collective, increasingly cumbersome nature of each happening this week has effective deflated my optimism and hope for myself in the future. It could’ve been the arrest of two friends and another student, followed by the short disappearance of another. It could’ve been the realization of the deepening burden of schoolwork before I leave, and the very real possibility of fucking up my GPA. It could’ve been the rude awakening of the potential loss of my relationship because of my own plans for the next few years. Hell, it could even have been the news of the doctor who died in Tahrir Square, due to a blast of tear gas intentionally directed at the makeshift hospital, and the subsequent efforts of the police to ensure the doctor was neither moved nor spared her life. Either way, the combination of these happenings (the personal obviously of more weight than the rest), has cause me y question my choice of life path in ways never manifested before.
It’s the feeling of complete helplessness in cohorts with the gut-twisting realization of the very serious consequences of your choices that can bring you to your knees, can force you to forego all present responsibilities and just wish for what you’ve never wished before: to go home. All I’ve thought about this past week is going home in less than a month, see my family, sit down and talk with my sister the way we used to when she was all I had, see the most important person in my life and pretend that I’m not on the verge of ruining the best thing that ever happened to me because of my own insecurities and lack of self-worth.
Perhaps this last week has just been the result of an immature girl, PMS-ing in her own way, unable to cope with the simplest of troubles. Perhaps this has been the cold water dumped on a sleeping teenager to give a rude awakening on her own limitations she refuses to accept. Either way, I have a lot to think about in the upcoming months, and what I decide, comfortingly enough, will probably have a major, irreversible impact on the rest of my life.
No pressure.
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