Think. Really: Think!- August 31, 2013

What do you believe in?

I'm not talking about religion here, because I know a lot of readers of this blog are Christian. I'm talking about standards. Moral, unbiased, unreligious standards of the way life should be. In your ideal world, what would happen?

In mine, I wouldn't get up late and I would work out more often. Today I got up at 9:30 and went to get a brunch-type meal a while later. In my ideal world, I would actually eat three meals a day.

Most of my day was spent doing stuff on my to do list and studying. All my studying was from one class... I really underestimated how much I had to read for this class, so hopefully today helped me make some headway.

Ideally, I would be able to know all I was supposed to do and section it out appropriately. And not get bored in the library after sitting there for an hour and a half.

I wish I had time to read a normal book.

I wish I didn't miss my friends back home so much.

I wish it wasn't so freaking hot outside.

I tried to get some Lemonade as a study break, but the shop "Lemonade" was closed for the weekend. I settled with lemonade from Seeds.

My friends and I then had a little pow wow because we decided to make plans to explore the city tomorrow. We almost went to Disneyland. Almost! The ticket office at school is closed though, and even though it's a small discount, it would've still been a discount for the tickets.

Maybe in my ideal world, Disneyland would be either a lot cheaper or free.

We decided on the Santa Monica Pier instead. Hopefully that'll be fun!

After dinner at EVK, Jinny and I came back to the room to study more. I took a shower, and we were sitting at our desks concentrating on our work, when I noticed something out our window. My next words were such:

"Oh my gosh, Jinny, look outside!"

Two firetrucks, an ambulence, and a DPS car. With the lights on, but no sirens.

Jinny asked me, "Do you want to run downstairs and see what's up?"

We bolted down the hall, down the stairs, and opened the door to the stairwell. Down the hall were a bunch of officials and medics, very slowly bringing a stretcher down the hall with a boy in it. He looked passed out: his pants were down to his ankles (there was a cloth covering his... well... you know), a plastic bag all around his neck (just in case he puked, probably), and he was completely delirious. Didn't say a thing, but slumped down a couple times.

We saw him get wheeled past the stairwell door, and bolted right back up the stairs to our window to see him get put into the ambulance, and all the cars drive away.

Very clearly, alcohol poisoning. It's only been a week, but this isn't the first time it's happened at the school.

But it was the first time it happened to me.

I don't mean literally: I'm ok, not intoxicated at all, and didn't get pulled away on a stretcher. But not even Jinny had ever seen someone in this state ever before.

We went to the lounge to get some more information about how he got that drunk, and who the guy was, in general, then knocked on Sneha's door to tell her what had happened. She told us another story about a boy who got expelled from college, this year, for smoking weed in his room.

We ended up spending a countless amount of time in Sneha's room, just talking about how stupid people can be. We talked about alcohol and drugs, then rape and our messed-up rape culture, sex, pornography, then children, abortion, politics, the gun control laws, the death penalty... and then we came back to the room and realized it was 1 in the morning.

But it got me thinking... what would our culture look like without these issues? Without alcohol and drug abuse? Or without alcohol and drugs in general? What should the gun control laws be? What is wrong (or right) about the death penalty?

What would our world look like without boys being carried away in stretchers just because they tried to prove their worth in the bottom of a shot glass?

I'll tell you what it looks like now: like all of our worth fits in that shot glass.

I thought I knew before how I felt about these things. I thought I knew what to expect here. I thought I was so certain and rock-solid on my opinions and stances on these issues in life. Now... now I'm not so sure on some of those things. Now I'm wondering, what do I actually think?

What would my ideal world look like not just for my life, but for the world I'm living in today?

And that got me thinking: That's why we're in college, isn't it? To make a change in this world. To learn how messed up and screwed up and absolutely.... just.... shit our world and our society can be, but to do something about it in whatever way we can.

But what can we do? Where do we begin?

That I don't know... but I do feel... almost empowered by thinking about this. I may be ignorant; I'll admit it, I am, especially compared to how much some people here know about the world and it's issues from their different perspectives. I may be ignorant, but that doesn't mean I can't do something. There has got to be something I can do... somehow... some way... in my own way.

Maybe we all can.

I'm going to bed tonight with Sam's words to Frodo ringing in my ears:

"Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding onto something...
That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for."

For peace, for love, for hope, and for goodness... Fight on, friends.