Whenever I take time out of my day to sit and reflect, I'm almost always left full of doubt. The biggest question for any twenty-year-old never fails to surface.
"What am I doing with my life?"
It's not that I don't have ideas, because I do. In fact, I think I have too many. Throughout the past two years of college, I've thought about being anything from a psychiatrist to a forest ranger.
Now that my sophomore year is almost up, I'm concerned because I still have no definite idea of what I want to do.
When I chose to be a media study major, my parents wondered what kind of jobs would be available after graduation. Being a carefree high school student, I was more worried about whether or not I would enjoy what I was doing.
I will never regret that decision. As most people would expect, being a media study major allows me the freedom to take classes outside of my area of study.
So what have I learned so far?
Everyone takes themselves way too seriously.
Ask anyone who knows me, and they will tell you that I am nowhere near a crazy, pot-smoking liberal.
But everyday I wonder why the US thinks it has the right to police the world. Why won't China free Tibet? Why can't Palestinians and Israelis get along?
Go ahead and laugh. Call me na??ve. Tell me I "just don't understand." But I think we all don't understand. The world could be a different place.
Humans are like any other organism. We have our time here on Earth, and we can do with it whatever we please. What we don't seem to realize, is that however long human life on Earth lasts, it will be a blink of an eye on the time scale of the universe. So why choose to fill that time with hate?
Last year, the UB community had a chance to listen to the Dalai Lama speak. The idea he stressed the most was to practice compassion in our everyday lives.
Unfortunately, it seems that some students saw the simplicity of his ideas to be uninspiring. A friend of mine, when asked what he thought about the Dalai Lama, will tell you that any Joe Schmoe could say what his Holiness said.
While that may be true, I don't see anyone else who has completely dedicated his or her life to spreading the message of peace around the world.
The problem is that I don't see an easy way to leave the path we have gotten ourselves stuck on.
What we need to do is build a global community. We simply need to understand that we are all in this together. Every human wants and deserves to be happy.
So if you're going into business, don't strive to become a CEO that makes million dollar bonuses while your employees across an ocean work for less than minimum wage. Engineers should work on projects that will make a difference, not just a profit.
As for myself, I still don't know what I want to do with an education in media study. Sure it could be considered a "worthless" degree. But hey, so far I've learned more than I ever imagined.
Two things I am sure of: I will never take myself too seriously, and I will strive to practice compassion in whatever I do.
I encourage you to do the same.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
