What I want to do with my life...

Current mood: distressed

I want to change the world.

When I look around me, I see oppression and depression, bondage and brokenness, with no end in sight. I know we live in a fallen world. Clearly, our condition dictates these circumstances, but I do not want to stand idly by and allow evil to overrun us.

But how do I change the world?

By May 3, I will have earned a degree in teaching English as a second language. Economically useful for non-native speakers who want to get better jobs both overseas and here in the US, this degree was my "logical" choice when I started college. Now that I reach the end of collegiate scholarship, I'm wondering if I made the right choice all along. Do all seniors experience this doubt?

I have always had a strongly developed sense of justice. When I was little, this usually resulted, for example, in questioning parental authority in regards to dessert portions betwixt my sister and me. At the same time, I was a fierce advocate for world issues. I remember, as an eight year old, wondering at unstopped genocide. If my parents could stop my sister and me from whalloping each other with Barbie dolls--true story--then couldn't someone stop the fighting between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda or the Dagomba and the Konkomba in Ghana? Surely there was an adult somewhere with enough authority to put an end to the suffering.

As I grew up, I became accustomed to world issues. Malnutrition rusted African children's hair and bloated their stomachs. Leprosy, a seemingly incurable disease, claimed more victims and made them disfigured, sidewalk beggars. Single mothers prostituted themselves to old white men to provide for their children. Religious conflict sacrificed millions on the altar of arrogant self-righteousness. Bigotry of all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds whipped and beat the chosen oppressed. All of this became "just the way the world works" in my head, and I resigned myself to the world's fate.

Even so, I couldn't shake the injustice completely. At twelve, my family visited Dachau in Germany. My very core cried out in anger at what had happened at this concentration camp. I have no verifiable connection to the Holocaust, but my mind screamed that day, full of questions. Why would someone do this? Why didn't the townspeople know about the exterminations until after the war? Why didn't the world act sooner?

Since then, I've also seen the gypsy villages in Romania full of closely packed homes constructed from miscellaneous rubbish--scraps of metal and wood discarded by others and discovered as a missing wall or part of the roof. Half clothed, underfed, rejected by Romanian society, the gypsies exist in unbearable conditions. Even so, I saw joy in weathered faces, Spirit-provoked tears, and radiant smiles filled with cavity-strewn teeth.

I have rarely seen anything more beautiful.

I have also seen the images and heard the stories of women and children caught in human trafficking. Dark photographs of imprisoned children and abandoned, dying women paired with haunting stories of betrayal and abuse obstinately plague my heart, yanking at my conscience. How can I hear their distressing stories, see their hope emptied faces, and fail to act?

So I'm going to Bombay, India, in twenty days to work with local leadership, to make a difference. But after that trip is over, what then? Do I come back to America and work a job just to make ends meet and to pay off my college debt? That seems so…pointless. I don't mean to say that making ends meet and paying off college debt aren't important, but in light of what I COULD be doing with my life, they seem so paltry. Besides, I don't want to wait to do my part in changing the world. I want to start now.

But where? And how?

And how much can one person—with the exception of Jesus of Nazareth—change the world? There is too much to be done: too many wrongs to be righted, too many corrupt systems to overthrow, too many hurts to be healed. How can I make the difference I so long to instill in my world…?

(to be continued)