Bored to tears, that is.
My goodness, there is so little to do here. Today, I have only done five things: taken a shower, brushed my teeth, eaten, watched TV, and poked around the Internet. The worst news is that it doesn’t look like I’m going to be doing too much for the remainder of the day. No wonder I don’t tend to stay in Toronto for more than 24 hours.
I think this problem is more complicated, though; I think I’m bored with life. Right now, I’m trapped in normality, which Ellen Goodman paints quite grimly (and I’ll quote again): “Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”
No car or house for me yet, but the principle is the same – I’m a self-serving consumer like everyone else. In a meeting with a partner of Searchlight MD (who wanted to hire me for next term), I expressed my contempt for this type of lifestyle after he asked what I wanted to do with my life.
I told him that I didn’t want to be normal; I didn’t want to live a life for myself.. a life that would die with me when my body eventually expires. I want to make a difference in the world that would be remembered, so that things that I do will continue to survive well after my time comes.
Doing this, however, takes a certain degree of recklessness. It involves taking huge risks because, well, with little risk comes little return, which comes little impact. People like Nelson Mandela, Bill Gates, Bono, and Lance Armstrong aren’t going to leave a legacy because they played it safe.
I think that I have been getting a clearer idea about what I want to do, though. Slowly, but surely, I have been whittling away at the thick trunk of possibilities. Some of the things that have fallen to the side are being a doctor, and a lawyer, and a software engineer, and an actor, and a financial analyst. Not that there is anything wrong with these careers.. they’re just not for me.
One realization that is knocking on my door is that what I eventually do may not involve the church, per se. I feel that what I should do should be much more fundamental than the church.. my attention should be on the human condition. While much of my inspiration and motivation may be from my church upbringing and beliefs, I feel that I’d appeal more to my personal senses of morality and righteousness (which are, of course, influenced by my beliefs).
I read a recent TIME magazine, whose focus was on global health. On the cover, the caption read: “A special report on the world’s most dangerous diseases — and the heroes fighting them.” The article itself was beautiful, and it nearly moved me to tears.. the sheer love, compassion, and selflessness with which some people live inspired me, and it really tugged at my heart to do something myself. I often criticized the people who attended the Live 8 concerts and went gung-ho over the Make Poverty History campaign without doing something themselves to help solve the root of the problem, and I think that I ought to stop because I’m not doing enough.
The problems of disparity and inequality are gigantic. But, Bono writes in another article in the magazine that the solution is “tantalizingly within our reach.” Thanks to the advances of medicine and technology as a whole, we can envision a world without malaria, AIDS, TB, and so many other diseases. There really is hope for a better day.
The TIME article really challenged me with this: “To fight an enemy like this, we need an army nible as a virus, huge as hunger, brave as Marines. . . Maybe after all we’ve seen and heard and feared this year, maybe after all we’ve learned, something will be different this holiday season. Maybe instead of buying Aunt Margaret a sweater, we’ll buy a goat in her name from Heifer International to give a hungry family milk every day. Five follars buys a mosquito net to guard a sleeping child. We’ll find a mission. Raise the money. Raise an army. Save a life.”
I want to find my mission.. so badly. I want to get so fired up about it that, when I say that I won’t rest until it’s done, I almost do it (because we all know that it’s a figure of speech). I want to find something into which I can pour my all. I am so empty without it.
In the meantime, don’t be expecting presents for Christmas. Some of you, however, may receive pieces of paper that say that I’ve done something (good) in your name.
