I Can't Change the World

  When I was a little girl I wanted to make a big change in the world.  I wanted my name in the history books that I read in school.  Once I started to grow up my motto changed.  I thought to myself, "I don't want to change the world, I just want to make my life and the lives of those around me better."  One of the worse things about being an international studies major is that you study so much to try to completely understand the situation in different parts of the world, but at the end of the day, after all of your research and all of my thoughts, you realize you really can't change anything.  Life is more of one thing that leads to another and most world changers start out as only a group of people thinking and talking about an issue.  Very few of these instigators actually see a positive change in their own life time and even fewer of them are recognized for their contribution.

  Life is also very complete--as we all very well know--and it is rarely one thing that makes a direct change.  Thinking about the civil rights movements in the United States.  There were many books published and banned before any type of real change happened.  In the US Civil War, there were books and people that influenced a way of thinking, but no one thing stood out on its own.  Even Abraham Lincoln, who is credited for the end of slavery in the US, was rather pressured and a mire addition to a strand of actions that caused real change.

My journal as I use my book light to write

  Applying this back to my own thoughts and learning of the Middle East, I have been trying so hard to learn as much as I can about Jordan and our surrounding situations.  I try to learn about Palestinians and Israelis and trying to keep my own biases out of everything I see and trying to find both the black and the white of all people while allowing my opinions to be constantly changed--but at the end of the day, I don't have any type of control over what happens next.  I'm merely as student in this foreign country.  I see all the things I don't like about Jordan and I complain about them all the time, but my complaining has little to no affect on actually changing anything.

  I watch as Bahrain has been in a civil war now for over a year and every night the population gets tear gases while the world is oblivious.  I learn about all the devastation in Syria and how 70,000 people have died in the past two years but nothing has been done to end it.  Iraq is considered a hazardous waste land after the war with the United States.  The vast majority of them are now refugees in other countries yet those who live there now live in a constant reminder of the horrors of the US's search for weapons of "mass destruction."  Palestinians face nightly curfews that can prevent them from even returning to their own homes in their own lands after a certain hour or they simply get refused to travel out of their own city just because the Israeli soldier told them that they are not permitted to go to the next city that day.  Jordanian girls can live in constant harassment from boys yet they are too scared to tell their parents in fear that after finding out that she had contact with boys that they will deeply dishonored by her and perhaps even kill her for it.  I learn about all of this and yet all I can do is write in my journal and allow my emotions and my heart to bleed through the ink of my pin, not really reaching anyone.  I have to remind myself not to simply yell at my friends who I talk to when my heart is hemorrhaging.

  I remember back at home so many people that I know don't like to watch the news because it's rather depressing.  So many people are dying everyday but there is nothing that I can do to change it.  It's disheartening to learn about all the chaos and all the turmoil in the world so we simply shut off the news channels and just focus on our own little lives while the rest of the world runs through a moving obstacle course trying to stay alive.  In America it is so easy for us just to shut off the news but here in Jordan, the news surrounds us.  We can't ignore it because we're a little player trying not to get stepped on as the big fish dance or often fight.  The majority of Americans are more the scales of the fish getting rocked to sleep without knowing that America is part of a larger dance or fight.  We're ignorant of all that our country is involved in unless it directly affects us.

  But justly so.  Why should we study and know about all the chaos in the world when we have no control over it.  Life is a series of opportunities that come our way.  Sometimes we can create opportunities for ourselves, but rarely can we create opportunities that can actually change the world.  We cannot simply save ourselves.  The world has been in chaos long before we ever got on it and it will long be in chaos after we leave it. The saying goes, "Ignorance is Bliss."  Perhaps justly so.  What is better?  To be educated and feel the weight of the world on your shoulders and your hands tied behind your back not being able to do anything or to stay blind to everything around you and just look down at your own feet?  

  We all will forever be blinded by our own experiences, knowledge, and biases, but being blind shouldn't really be feared because it's inevitable.  I just feel like the wise and the courageous are people who are willing to constantly be learning and allowing their ideas of the world to grow and expand, yet, they need to be able to accept that the world is already in motion and there is only a few things they can really do to help change it.  The best men and women in the world are those who spend their lives trying to do good wherever they are--doing whatever they do.  By impacting those around us we impact the world.  Be open, learn, constantly be growing, know that you'll never arrive for there is no final destination.  Life is more like a ride.  We don't go on a roller coaster just to get to the end (at least not if you enjoy roller coasters) but instead we get on to just enjoy it.  Learn, grow, and pass that information on.  Help those around you.

  One of my close friends e-mailed me one day and started explaining her thought on how so often the good deeds go unnoticed--meaning, that there are so many good deeds happening around us that we never hear about them.  We never know about the good things that others do for others because the good hearted don't do it out of a desire to be recognized, but out of a desire just to contribute to their world.  Whenever I get into thoughts of all the chaos I like to remind myself that in the midst of everything, there is always good.  Our world is a two sided coin.  For as much evil there is as much good.  It's just a matter of which side we choose to focus our energy on.  We should know both sides of the coin and by doing so we will feel more peace. 

These are just some of my pillow talk.