"What are you doing with your life?" I hear it all the time. Parents, family members, friends, college admissions officers, random people on the street... they all seem so preoccupied with what you're doing and where you're going and how much sense it makes and long-term plans and short-term plans and medium-term plans and it all sounds like such a big mess of preparation for what ultimately amounts to nothing at all.

"I'm having fun," I reply. Well that seems a bit naive, when are you going to grow up, get a degree, start a business, get married, have a family, you can't have fun forever.

And there's where I realize that so many people lack a basic insight into their lives. I disagree. There's no formula to happiness. That's why it confuses mathematicians so much.

When you can't spend an hour looking at cloud shapes in the sky, when you can't spin in circles until you fall down, when you trade the things that you once loved for lame excuses and "responsibilities," that's when you're in trouble.

Pointless activities are often the most meaningful.

Maybe everyone could use a little reevaluation. Something more important than stock portfolios or grade point averages or future planning. All day today, I heard people listing the things they were happy to have. But really, when was the last time you spent a whole day enjoying those things you were thankful for?

Right now, I'm thankful for eighty-three year old great aunts that ask philosophical questions.

And I just spent a day enjoying one's company.

Currently Listening A Crow Left of the Murder By Incubus ----Megalomaniac see related

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been eight years since my last confession. Here are my sins:

I have no faith in your second Messiah incarnate, George Walker Bush.

I believe in a woman's right to an abortion, the marriage of any two people in love, right of all people to preservation of health, pursuit of knowledge through science, and separation of religion from public affairs.

I worship love and happiness over the thickness of my wallet.

I believe in honoring the dead by making peace for the living. I do not believe the emotions of a nation are to be used as a political tool.

It is September 11, 2005, and I am more dismayed with the American public than with terrorism.

Please forgive me.

I spent seventeen days in Africa.

I would talk about all the fun things I did there, but I came back with something more important. Knowledge.

On some stellar level, we're all connected. We breathe the same air, thirst for the same water, need shelter, food, warmth, and human contact. Yet we live in vastly different circumstances. While many Americans and Europeans willingly spend $40 for a tank of gas and blow it away for pleasure, people on the other side of the world scrounge for enough sustenance to make it through the day.

HIV, malaria, starvation and greed plague the landscape. Often, the only comfort found by people is in the hands of God, as their lives deteriorate before their eyes. Governments have little control and are ridden with corruption. Children are forced to do hard labor to support their families.

Freedom doesn't ring near the equator. It taunts.

In a straw hut village of the Tanzanian countryside, I gained the single worst memory of my life. Passing through, we heard the mortal human screams of a woman in agony-- the kind of scream that comes when your very soul is in pain. I followed the screams to a hut; inside, a man in camo was raping a young woman, knife to her throat. What the hell does one do at such a sight? I yelled for my dad. The man dug the knife further into her skin. I shot him straight through the kneecap with the pistol I carried. As he fell to the floor, I saw the woman's child at the other side of the room, watching but not crying.

Night after night, I relive that experience in a nightmare. I can't sleep. I may have been more wounded than the man I shot. Yet my issues are miniscule compared to those of the little boy cowering in the corner of that hut.

We worry that children will learn about sex and curse words in America. Africans have to worry about children seeing their parents violently raped by soldiers.

What happened to the birthplace of the world?

Europe did. And later, America did, too. White people enslaved Africans for many centuries. And they still do, today. But it's not called slavery anymore-- now, it's called capitalism. Through intellectual property restrictions, African countries don't get medicines that they need. Through foreign aid programs, African commerce is undercut severely and Africans are stuck doing industry labor for other countries.

To politicans, though, Africa is merely a statistic. Useful aid is sacrificed every year for defense budgets, tax breaks, and Halliburton subsidies. What is this country I live in?

Medicine should never be a business. Politics should never be a game. Human life should never be considered expendable. A continent should never be forgotten.

I spent seventeen days in Africa, and I'm ashamed of what I've come back to.

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With that, I'm off to Africa.

I.

Eyes tell you a lot about a person. Quality of character, depth of emotion, intellect, personality and philosophy show through them. They are, in our world of clichés, the "windows to the soul." When you find a person with good eyes, you grab hold and never let go.

On a dance floor one night, I found those eyes. Funny, to have looked at them every day but to have never really seen them. It was one of the most enchanting experiences of my life. As my logic goes, I held on.

Five months later, I still can't stop looking into her eyes. Like a great movie, every time I look at them I see something new, something beautiful. It's enough to give Shakespeare writer's block.

She reminds me of everything that makes life worth living. Listening to street musicians playing their hearts out. Stuffed animals. Finding every ticklish spot on the body. Writing long letters about nothing at all. Spinning in circles until you're dizzy. Flowers. Talking to strangers. Cloud watching. Laughing at silly cartoons. Being incredibly excited over everything you anticipate. Paraxodically, it's when we're at our most childish that we're most mature. I love the impression she's made on me.

I love.

Two very powerful words, yet they seem to roll off my tongue for this girl without hesitation. Never before has it felt so good to be so immersed in irrational thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes it's great to be able to just sit down and talk for hours on end. Holding her in my arms, I feel so safe and tangled up in her. Nothing can bring us down.

I love Eugenia.