Oh baby, baby it's a wild world.

I read a newspaper article today by my favorite columnist, Steve Duin. He writes commentaries about the world around him and his intelligent insight gives me hope for a better world. Today he writes about Jordan Wiley, an employee of Legacy Emmanuel Health Systems in Portland, Oregon who spent part of last year working with Doctors Without Borders in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His work, although it entailed treating 6,300 patients without charge, was more about his trying than his doing. He is quoted as saying: "It is not about changing the world."
Than what is it about? I have, since I was a child, wanted to change the world.
I entered this world through a birth canal, kicking and screaming and gasping for my first breath; an entrance into a world I didn't want to enter. I hope to leave this world doing the same thing; kicking and screaming and gasping for my first breath of eternal life. I want to live a good life because I can. I would like to leave the people around me better than when I first encountered them. Is this possible?
Because Nigeria looks an awful, horrible, tragic lot like Mogadishu, Darfur and Rwanda. Does the world ever change? Can we stop history form repeating itself? Can we stop militant and sexual violence if it is serving to briefly satisfy the needs of human beings?
Jordan Wiley goes on to say, "It's doing what you can."
Yesterday I hugged someone who was crying from bad news. I am deeply in love with this person's heart. But our hearts and their humanity invite sadness. I feel privileged that I am trusted enough to recieve news, to hear other people's feelings and to see their emotions. It is something I beg to be burdened with. But where do you take it? What do you do with it? What do you do? All I can do is show them that, for right now, each other are the closest thing we have to Jesus.
We are so much. I have been running recently. It is an escape that is different from eating, drinking, or lust...pleasure. On Friday, I am going to escort my best friend onto our high school's football field because she is a member of the homecoming court. I can be her biggest fan. My art teacher passed around a sign-in sheet with this quote, the author is escapes me, but it said something along the lines of: "We would astound even ourselves if we did all the things that we are capable of doing."

What are we?

After a long week, I have arrived at a question. Questions are never our destinations, answers are, so perhaps this is the beginning of another journey towards eventual self-and outward-discovery, which seems a little burdensome at the time.
I keep asking myself the question, "What are you doing?"
I do not ask myself a question like this because I feel I am doing nothing or that I have no direction. I ask myself this question because I have come to equate living with doing.
How can I continue to do what I do-menial tasks and involvements-while there are things, so many things, going on around me?
These "things" are not a general summary of world events. They are not a reflection of history or of past events. They are the present reality. When I say "things," I mean specific, real, true, and heartbreaking news I have received this week. And the most horrible thing about news is that is has implications for someone. It affects someone. More than someone. It affects you and me. Everyone in some way.
I found out tonight that there is a student at a neighboring high school who is in a situation no young person should be in. There are no easy solutions. There is no possible way that a heart will not be broken, that someone will be able to avoid suffering the consequences of a rash decision. It is simple and yet it is the hardest thing they will have have to overcome in their life. As I was thinking about this student, a person I have never met before, my heart hurt. My heart hurts when I hold my breath. I told myself that they are nothing to me, I don't know this person, I have never laid eyes on them, I will not be affected by their choice. I told myself that I don't have to feel sadness or feel empathy or feel on the verge of tears. I don't have to feel.
But I do.
What am I doing when there is news of death close to home?
When this end of life means the end of something else to someone else, what am I doing?
I am a being.
I need to be.